Emerald Crab & Xenia

[cjb]

Will an Emerald crab nip at Xenia? I had my Xenia for about a month he was doing great. Even starting to split. I got an emerald crab to help with Algae and all of a sudden hands were missing and the Xenia started to stay relatively small and closed up.
My water was tested by myself and my lfs and it is good. However I did need to boost my Cal. levels a little.
Any direction would be greatly appreciated.

 

[josh]

CJB,
Well since no one else took this one I will tell ya what I know. Yes it is possible for emeralds to nip at corals in general. Crabs by nature are omnivors, however "most" mithix crabs tend to eat algae, bubble to be more specific. To tell the truth I wish my emerald would take care of some of my xenia, it nice at first then it gets to weed proportions. But to answer your question, yes it is possible for him to nip at it. I take you haven't actually seen him do it?
HTH
-Josh-

 

[kdlbem]

I got rid of all four of my emeralds because they would rather pick at my corals than the algae. I actually caught them eating trumpet, zenia, and goniopora. So the answer is YES!
HTH,
B

 

[cjb]

Thanks for the info.

 

[jedimaster]

I have a feeling like an emerald crab is about to bit the big one.

 

[-shawn-]

I could be the emerald crab, but I have seen of the same thing happening on two different occassions. One, a Maroon clown made the xenia on of his host, and he would beat the xenia up sometime and it would lose its fingers, and stay closed up for awhile. The other time some type of worm was hitchhiking on the xenia and the worm was eating away at it. Sorry I can't remember the name of the worm right off...I'll try to find out. I'm not ruling out the emerald, but these are some other possibilities.
Best of luck!

 

[mlm]

I have 4 emerald crabs in my tank and 14 scarlet hermits and I have no problems with them eating my Xenia or any other corals. Sometimes the emeralds will hide in my frog spawn and mushroom corals but they don't actually eat them but they do harass them.