killing crabs

[Ben]

Hi

my friend has a marine tank and wen eva he sees a crab he takes a sharp tool and smashes it. i knwo they eat ur fish but do u think its cruel to do it or dont u care.

 

[spanair]

To be honest, I feal bad for the crabs as they are just doing what's natural for them and they got caught into his aquarium. Said that I would not want a crab eating my fishes either, specially when these fishes aren't cheap either .

In 1 way I think it's bad but in another way I know why he does it.

 

[schzaam]

he doin what he think is ok so let it be my personal opion is that i htink it cruel and pointless

 

[ostrow]

what sort of crabs are eating what sort of fish???

 

[mrcrabbs]

Why is he doing it?

 

[hyrookin]

if its mantis shrimps-its gotta be done

 

[ste2k3]

Any crabs I find (teadybears etc) or mantis shrimps but I ain't found one of those as of yet, go into my refugium and live there or behind the wier boxes in the tank and I leave them there. It's not there fault they ended up in your aquarium. If you find any coral eating/fish eating crabs/shrimps etc, I say put them in your or someone elses sump or refugium etc. I also do that with some of the larger bristle worms that come in on live rock but the small ones are usually harmless,

ste

 

[Navarre]

I agree with Ste.
I had a gorgeous Flame angel that was killed by a crab. The angel tried to swim through a very narrow gap in the live rock and a crab pounced on it. The angel got its gill spikes stuck in the rock and was trapped. By the time i got enough of the rock moved ot reach the angel im afraid the crab had done its work and ripped most of the face to shreds.
Needless to say the angel was dead. It cost me a small fortune (£90) and i had it for no more than 4 days. Yes my temper was running hig and the rest os the afternoon was spent ripping the tank to shreds in search of this crab with the full intention of crushing it up and feeding it to my trigger
However, when i finally caught it i realised that it was only doing what came naturally. It was opportunistic and the angel was unlucky. I didnt have a sump at the time but i asked a friend with a nano tank (invert only) if they were interested and they agreed to accept it. They see it every now and then but its very secrative. If it happened to me now i would move it to my sump as they do a great job at removing detrius etc which is usually their main food su pl.y they just get lucky when it comes to fish. (unless you have something like a teddybear or swimmer etc... but even then it would go in the sump)