Hairy-legged crab ID

[Otter]

I've decided that any time I need to clean my tank out of hitchhikers, I just need to remove my sun coral for feeding and scrape off the bottom. I found this little fellow tonight. He's got the hairy legs and the narsty pinchers, but I don't have a fuge so I'd rather get a second opinion as I've got nowhere safe for him to live out his days. I tried WWM but they have a "Gah! Kill it!" approach to crabs. Any thoughts on his ID?

 

 

[matter1331]

generally if they have sharp pinchers they're bad. I wouldn't take any chances with that guy.

[The Propagator]

Gorilla crab.

Bad guy DITCH IT.

 

We ( nano reefers and reefers alike) call this little terror a gorilla crab because no one has ever been able to get a posetive ID on it.

( Including Eric boreman)

 

So until they do....

Its a gorilla crab.

[StanD]

bad crab. send it to heron - he's trying to bait a mantis trap

[Otter]

Thanks for the IDs!

 

bad crab. send it to heron - he's trying to bait a mantis trap

 

/sigh Would love to but it's about the size of my pinky nail, and I have a tiny pinky nail. We were joking about making the world's smallest batch of crab bisque...

[vike50brian]

Because of the light color patterns on its shell, it looks to me to be a very young sally lightfoot, a.k.a. nimble spray crab. If thats what it is, they are suppose to be reef safe although they can get aggressive when they get bigger( about 3"). I wrote a post on here asking what i should do about mine and got mixed opinions. I have seen small ones at my lfs that were very light in color like that. While its small, i say give him a chance. He's to small to hurt any fish, and about those sharp pintchers, sally crabs have sharp claws but use them to pick algae and such from the live rock.