white crab

[Afish4u]

Ok so I didn't buy this guy I pulled him out of my electric scallop any of you guys have an idea?

[DevilBoy]

Aaron
is he a white or more translucent? its hard to tell from that photo

[ChrisPrusha]

He was in your scallop? How is your scallop doing?

[Geoff]

not sure, but most bivalves have commensal crabs/shrimp that will live inside of them. as with this one here they tend to be very light coloured.

i am not saying that this is one, but it is a very big possibility. could you get a pic of the claws. they look rather small, which also points to the commensal crab idea.

scallops are wicked hard to keep in a reef system. i would prolly put more blame on your GOOD water quality than on the crab. i am being very serious here when i say GOOD water quality. in order to have a tank that would keep a scallop your tank would need to be cloudy and not able to be seen through.

G~

[Afish4u]

The poor scallop is dead he was the one in my avatar)

Originally Posted by ChrisPrusha

He was in your scallop? How is your scallop doing?

[Afish4u]

Originally Posted by Geoff

not sure, but most bivalves have commensal crabs/shrimp that will live inside of them. as with this one here they tend to be very light coloured.

i am not saying that this is one, but it is a very big possibility. could you get a pic of the claws. they look rather small, which also points to the commensal crab idea.

scallops are wicked hard to keep in a reef system. i would prolly put more blame on your GOOD water quality than on the crab. i am being very serious here when i say GOOD water quality. in order to have a tank that would keep a scallop your tank would need to be cloudy and not able to be seen through.

G~

I had that scallop for about 4 months (I have one other still kicking) I did do some target feeding. Yes the claws are very small. I do have him currently in another tank by himself.

[kyrie_eleison]

YES! Someone else has one of these guys too! I have no idea what it is but I caught it munching on my maiden's hair. Is it reef safe? Can you believe it...that thing can swim!

[LeslieH]

That's definitely an obligate commensal crab, probably family Pinnotheridae which contains most of the bivalve commensal crabs. Was your electric scallop from the Caribbean? Back in 1975 a new genus of pinnotherid called Limotheres was described from a caribbean Lima.

If you don't want it my colleague here at the museum would probably love to have it for research.

[kyrie_eleison]

I don't know if this is the same thing...but it is fast and it swims; not to mention it was hard to get a decent picture of. It's a little blurry but it looks a little like the first photo.

[LeslieH]

Kyrie - the body shape is typical for a pinnotherid but I don't think the swimming is. I'm forwarding your pic to our crustacean curator - any chance of getting a better one of the animal in a dish?

[kyrie_eleison]

Leslie,

I'll try. I put him in a small quarantine tank right now. The only reason I was able to catch him in the first place is because I caught him munching on my maiden's hair in a 5 gallon nano. Luckily there isn't a whole lot of room to run or in his case--swim, hence the ease of capture.

He's interesting but is he reef-safe? Pretty resilient considering I had nitrite spikes through the roof in that little tank.

[LeslieH]

I sent both images to Jody for his opinion. Kyrie - your image is too poor for him to work with, sorry. Afish4u - now that's one interesting animal! Jody said it's nothing like anything he's ever seen or could find in any of his books (and he's got a lot!). Would you be willing to send it to us? It's not going to last very long without a host and it would be extremely useful for Jody. If it is unique he'll probably describe it. We'll pay for postage.

[Afish4u]

Sorry but the crab is dead. It only lasted a little time after that. I'll try to find out where the scallop might have come from but ... well let me look into it.