Swimming Crab

I've mentioned my friend Cindy from work before who likes to adopt "bad" crabs. For a long time now, Cindy has been telling me about this monstrous Swimming Crab that she has. It was small when she found it as a hitchhiker on a coral, but has since grown to over four inches wide. The crab is a confirmed female, having been gravid in the past. I've always been fascinated by this crab and had hoped to visit Cindy's home to photograph the crab and her other aquariums.



Yesterday, I was greeted at work by Cindy holding a large bag of water. She explained that the aquarium the crab was living in crashed and the crab needed a new emergency home. Being sympathetic to bad crabs myself, I of course agreed to put the crab in my sump. I thought my husband would be pleased, since he is a self-professed crustacean lover, but when I handed him the bag, he screamed like a girl. I have to admit, I'm a little scared of the crab, too. I was careful not to get my fingers too close to those claws.



It was hilarious when I poured the crab out of the bag, she is heavy! We think the crab is a Red Leg Swimming Crab or something similar. If anyone can ID this crab to genus or species, I'd love to hear from you. Since she was found on a coral that was imported for aquarium trade, she is likely from the tropical Indo-Pacific or possibly Australia.

Cindy says this crab loves to eat table shrimp and will actually use her hind legs to swim to the top of the water if she senses food. Check out these flat swimming legs.



I'm excited to be caring for this crab for a while, she is certainly an interesting specimen. She moves around a lot more than the other crabs I have, constantly walking around and eating things off the floor...probably my other bad crabs.

More Swimming Crab Pics

Squat Lobster Hosting on Seahorse

I had a wonderful weekend as a bridesmaid at an outdoor Halloween wedding, or "Hallowedding." Unfortunately, I got the flu and didn't even look at my aquariums for a few days. (My husband was kind enough to feed the seahorses and new Flashing Tilefish for me.) I got up this morning for work and decided to pop a cube of mysis in for the seahorses quickly. I glanced in right before leaving and saw something strange on Hoover, one of my female seahorses. I looked closer, and saw my newest Crinoid Squat Lobster hosting on her!



At first, I was shocked. This is not normal behavior. I wanted to knock the thing off or her as quickly as possible, but I had to grab a couple quick snapshots of the situation first. I think the squat lobster was smart for doing this, because as Hoover swam up to the top of the water to eat some mysis, the squat lobster grabbed some mysis, too. I don't know how it thought a seahorse was similar enough to a Crinoid to host on it, but it worked. Maybe someday squat lobsters will figure out that seahorses are better hosts than Crinoids, because they move toward the food instead of waiting for the food to come to them. It was sort of funny, because the squat lobster seemed a bit triumphant in his experiment, but also a little confused as to why his host was moving around so much. He looked like a cowboy trying to hang onto a bull.

Hoover didn't seem irritated by the squat lobster. Normally if something is on her (like another seahorse), she bucks and shakes, trying to dislodge it. Even though she was acting normal with the squat lobster attached to her, it made me really uncomfortable. So I grabbed her and shook it off of her. She went back to eating right away, and the squat lobster sunk to a crevice in a rock, where he has stayed.

Flashing Tilefish

I finally got my dream fish two weeks ago - a Flashing Tilefish Hoplolatilus chlupatyi I've named Blinky. These fish are notoriously delicate and difficult to keep, but Blinky was in excellent shape when I got him. He's been eating like a pig from day one and has a nice, full belly.



For the first two weeks, though, he hid under a rock and I had to target feed him. It didn't take him long to recognize me as the mysis dispenser, and he would come out from under his rock a few inches to eat. He's even started coming out of hiding any time I walk up to the tank, hoping to be fed. Today he was comfortable enough to swim further from his hiding place and explored the whole left side of the tank. I'm really happy he's doing so well.

As you can see, tilefish and seahorses make great companions. Above is a picture of Blinky and Juniper, my adult male H. erectus seahorse, sharing a meal together. This blue color with the green dorsal is Blinky's default coloration. When he gets excited or scared, he starts rapidly flashing all different vivid colors - pink, yellow, green purple...it's incredible. My boss had one of these for years and said that after a while, it stopped flashing and just stayed blue all the time. It's still a gorgeous fish even when it gets comfortable enough to stop flashing.



One reason tilefish are difficult to keep is because they are so shy. They should have the most peaceful tank mates like seahorses and gobies. Flashing Tilefish are especially delicate because they are deepwater fish living in waters over 100 feet deep. This is what causes their higher price tag; deepwater fish are more costly because it's more risky to dive for them. Once they are collected, they have to be slowly acclimatized to lower pressure or they will die. A Flashing Tilefish will set you back about $150 or more. But if you can find a healthy specimen, they are worth it.

Flashing Tilefish must be kept in an aquarium with a tightly closed lid. Any tiny holes in the canopy or top for tubes or cords should be well covered. The number one cause of death for Tilefish after being acclimated is from carpet surfing - jumping out of the aquarium.

Check out these Youtube videos of Flashing Tilefish changing colors:

Squat Lobster Battles

Welcome to Felicia's Aquarium Adventures, your number one source for pet Crinoid Squat Lobster information!

A couple weeks ago, I was happy to find a large white and yellow Allogalathea elegans that I think was a female. Similar Galatheid crabs can be sexed by the width of the carapace; females have a wider carapace than the males for carrying eggs. But another close relative, the porcelain crab, the females are significantly smaller than the male. Either way, I think there is a difference in width between male and female Crinoid squat lobsters.

The photo above is a wild gravid female Crinoid squat lobster in its host. Most of the squat lobsters I see are probably juveniles or males, so I don't often see the ones with wider bodies, like the one pictured below.

squatting lobster
Originally uploaded by Salt Water People

After seeing my black Allogalathea elegans and my Galathea inflata sharing a Crinoid, I had the idea to try to make a pair of one of my squat lobsters. I've talked to divers who say it's rare to see more than one squat lobster on a Crinoid in the wild. No one is quite sure if they live as pairs or prefer solitude. Sadly, the new squat lobster didn't live through acclimation. My dreams of having a pair of squat lobsters were dashed.

I did find another yellow squat lobster soon after, but I believe it is either a male or a juvenile. I bought him and added him to my aquarium where he started a game of musical Crinoids with the other squat lobsters.

I've never actually seen my squat lobsters battle, but I see the aftermath. There are two Crinoids in my aquarium, both are black. They've been alive, honestly, longer than I expected. One is in pretty good shape still, and it is the preferred Crinoid. The other lost the tips of its arms long ago. Darth Maul, my 2+ year old Galathea inflata, in August was sharing the good Crinoid with Darth Vader, an Allogalathea elegans who has been with us about 6 months. For a few weeks, it seemed like a truce had been struck between the two. Then one day, I woke up to find Darth Maul's molt under the good Crinoid. Darth Vader was there, but Darth Maul was missing. When I finally found him, he was in the small Crinoid and missing an arm. There must have been a feirce battle while Darth Maul was molting and Darth Vader found him in a weakened state.

Squat lobster status quo was reached and maintained until a third squat lobster, the yellow and white one my husband dubbed "Bananarama II" was added to the aquarium. This is when the game of musical Crinoids commenced. The next day, Bananarama was in the small Crinoid, Darth Maul was in the preferred Crinoid, and Darth Vader was alone. The day after that, Darth Vader took the small Crinoid from Bananarama, who I found on the complete other side of the 4 foot aquarium. Here he is next to my special-needs goby and laying claim to this empty snail shell




Chucks' addiction has a beautiful gallery of hitchhiking Galatheid squat lobsters.

Anthias Mouth Stuck Open

When I came home from work today, I was shocked to see my one-eyed yellow eye anthias, Lucky, with his mouth stuck open! Unfortunately, I've heard of and seen this happen to anthias before when they are stressed out, and they usually don't come back from it. I have no idea why this happens, but I've always wondered. I think Lucky may have just been surprised by the door opening abruptly (the tank is right by the front door). Lucky is blind in one eye and often swims full speed into rocks and other objects in the tank, so it's possible he injured his mouth doing that. Luckily, Lucky was able to close his mouth after a few minutes and is eating right now.

It kind of looks like this, when an anthias' mouth is stuck open.

Here's a picture of Lucky right after I brought him home. He was still a little thin in this photo, but he's doing great now.



I've also heard of and seen stressed anthias who bend in the middle and can't straighten themselves. They usually die shortly after. Small anthias are delicate little creatures and should always be handled with great care! Don't expose them to sudden bright lighting, changes in water parameters, aggressive fish, or other stressors. Stress kills anthias.

Columnaris

One of my favorite things to do on vacation is to visit aquarium and pet stores. On a trip to Madison this spring, we picked up a few guppies for our freshwater tank. I hadn't been paying enough attention to my freshwater tanks and only had a few fish left. One was my favorite guppy, a male that was descended from a line of albino magenta pintails crossed with some neon doubleswords and some of my best friend's mutt guppies. He was the last of my guppies, and had no mates.



I added the two new females after a long, careful acclimation. I didn't bother to quarantine them, after all, they're only guppies, right? Wrong. Less than two days later, the new guppies looked like this:



I removed them to a quarantine tank, but they were too far gone. I started doing heavy water changes and maintaining a salt level of about .2% (about one teaspoon per gallon) using freshwater aquarium salt. Within days, my favorite guppy and a number of my other livebearers had succumbed to the disease. I also dosed with Mela Fix, though I'm not sure how effective it was. Perhaps without it, the mortality rate would've been higher. Everyone else has since recovered, but when I added some healthy new fish last month from a private breeder I trust, a few of them contracted what I suspect was columnaris and died shortly after I put them in the tank. Columnaris can stick around for a long time, even though my other fish are not showing symptoms.

Columnaris, Flavobacterium columnare (formerly known as Flexibacter columnaris) is a gram negative bacteria that is not easy to treat. I don't like to use medications, but some popular medications for curing Columnaris are Acriflavine, Furan, and low doses of Formalin. Neomycin and many common antibiotics are not effective. Medications must be used in quarantine tanks because the medications kill the aquarium's ammonia-eating bacteria. Ammonia is much easier to control in a bare tank than in a display tank containing substrate. If you have more than one tank, be careful not to cross contaminate with fish nets, hands, or specimen containers.

If you have any suggestions or questions, feel free to leave a comment. If you've had a Columnaris outbreak in your aquarium and successfully treated it, I'd love to hear from you!

Blue Eyed Crabs

I have a 13 gallon trash can under my aquarium that acts like a sump. There's not much I can put in there, because it's so tall and narrow. I have some Chaeto and other algae in there, but not much else. I started noticing a thin layer of grossness collecting on the bottom, and decided to start collecting "bad crabs" to help clean it up. I already had one bad crab, some kind of red Xanthid crab, shown above. I moved that crab to the trash can sump and have been on the lookout for more bad crabs ever since.

Probably the baddest of the bad crabs (for SPS tanks) is the blue eyed crab, Cymo spp. They live on stony corals like Acropora and Pocillopora sp. Unlike most symbionts, these crabs do considerable damage to their hosts. I'm not sure if it's so bad in the wild, but in captivity, these little crabs can quickly kill your prized Acropora colony. I assume they eat the coral's flesh, as they leave dead, white patches in their wake.

My friend Cindy from work shares my sympathy for all things "bad" in the aquarium world, and has adopted countless bad crabs, Stomatopods, and other weird reef-unsafe stuff. She says the blue eyed crabs will eat frozen foods if they don't have a coral to eat (though hers usually do, the spoiled brats). She has some gorgeous bad crabs in many different colors; one is the size of her hand!

I threw three blue eyed crabs into my trash can sump along with my red Xanthid crab last week. There's enough Chaeto in there to prevent territory disputes, and I'm sure enough food gets to them to scavenge. We'll see how these crabs do in my sump. I'll probably be adopting more"bad crabs" in the future. I'll let you know how it goes.

I found this blog post really interesting, along with having a great photo of one of these beasts, it says that the blue eyed crab in Singapore, Cymo andreossyi, is listed as Vulnerable. Do you need any more reason to throw your bad crabs into the sump instead of your trash can?