emerald eats duster???

[nero]

hi, i just got a feather duster today and one of my emerald crabs was trying to eat the end of its tube (opposite end of feathers). i managed to scare the crab away, but i was wondering if i should worry about the duster and the crab getting into further confrontations... has anyone else had a problem with emeralds (or any crab for that matter) and dusters? please let me know, i dont want to have a dead feather duster and a fat crab. thanks for the help!

 

[crm13]

A while back I had a situation with my emerald crabs eating my yellow polyps. They were slowly dissappearing, and I couldn't figure it out. Then , one day I caught one of them in the act. It would just pop the "heads" off and just start munching it. I ended up putting them in the qt, and they've been in there ever since. That was about 7 or 8 months ago, I think. I haven't gotten any more since. From what I understand about them, though, sometimes they can do stuff like that. Some are well behaved, some can be a threat to some of your soft polyp corals. Isn't the feather duster you got have a hard shell? If so, I don't think that I would worry if it is poking around that end of it. It may just be eating some algae off the tube.

 

[kiharaconn]

I had a red legged crab eat one of my feather dusters. After a long ordeal with shipping they arrived 10 days later surprisily alive. I put them in the tank and went over to help a friend with her tank. When I came home one of the two dusters I bought had been eaten. All that was in the tank was a couple of snails, 1 crab, and some live rock. Alittle later I caught him on the other duster snapping away at the tube. Needless to say the crab was rehomed to my friends tank. I've also read that the blue legged crab will do the same thing.

 

[mikegray]

yea my tank got soo bad and dirty i needed a clean up crew and i got all the snails and crabs and stuff. but i watch my dam hermit each all the snails and some smaller hermits.. im like wtf how do people keep there tanks clean with snails and stuff when they all each eachother... i always had a dam problem heh

 

[big911dog]

different strains of hermits have different aggression levels.

 

[nero]

crm13-
the tube on my feather duster is pretty soft... i think if the crab tried hard enough it could eat it... but the duster is pretty big (6 in long) so i think it would take a while for the crab to eat it. i havent seen the crab eating off it since yesterday so i think it might be fine thanks for your info anyways