MacheteLopez
Non-member
I recently bought a decorator crab and no more than a week in and this little guy has already chopped up my polyps, completely turned into Bobby Flay and diced up my polyps......what are your guys thoughts on decorator crabs?
Decorator Crab: Pros & Cons
- Thread starter MacheteLopez
- Start date
I have had three different kinds. My first one was a decorator crab and stayed about one and a half inches and was a great citizen actually picking between the zoas and other corals, every so often taking a zoa or pally or piece of macro and attaching it for camo, but never harming anything. I had it for almost 2 years. My second one was a terror and was a sponge decorator crab carrying its camo rather than attaching it to its back. I would offer seaweed strips and other tasty snacks for it to eat, but it loved to consume zoas, mushrooms, featherdusters, acans, anything it could tear apart. It lived for well over a year. The third one started off fine but was a sponge decorator also and not a regular decorator like my first one and it started to act like the second one. When the third guy was removed and put into a non-coral tank he was destroyed by the second one, who was already moved there, in about a week. Before the second guy finally passed he was about the size of a tennis ball and would cut up anything, even a 10 inch tall toadstool. He would try to use corals for camo that were so big he would get flipped sideways, feet going crazy, moving in a circle refusing to let go of the coral. Near the end he was using a big piece of filter foam. I good decorator is great, a bad one not so much. I have never had a spider or arrow decorator crab, they get large and I have only had nano tanks. I would say that decorators are really interesting and kind of cool, but the possibility is that they could harm your coral.
