What the heck happened here?

**evilhorde** · 07-12-2012, 02:26 AM

This morning I was looking in my invertebrate tank pondering my planaria problem when my red claw crab suddenly flew by. I have never seen it move so fast and it looked like it was on fire. If this had been a cartoon it would have been hilarious. I knew I would never be able to correctly describe what I was seeing so I grabbed my camera and filmed it for a moment. There was nothing I could do for the crab so I continued on with my morning and had a shower. When I came out the poor crab had only one claw and two legs left attached.

What the heck happened? The crab was in the tank for about 6 months with two others. I can only see one of the remaining crabs but they have some great hiding spots, so I may still have two. I really want to figure out what happened so that I can make sure it doesn't happen again.

Any ideas?

**evilhorde** · 07-12-2012, 02:30 AM

I should point out that the green chunks all over him (her?) is just duckweed.

**Lady Hobbs** · 07-12-2012, 06:16 AM

I have no idea. Could one have attacked the other? I can't tell what size tank that is but it doesn't look big enough of two of these crabs. Maybe it is, I just can't tell.

**evilhorde** · 07-12-2012, 12:02 PM

The tank is a 37 gallon and there is a section that is around 12" by 8" which is out of the water. I haven't seen them behave violently towards each other before. They all had seperate areas that they hung out in and all of them seemed to stay out of the deepest water.
The crab with the smoke was in tank around six months and the two new crabs were in for just over one month. I seldom saw all three at once and I can only find one other right now.

**redfan** · 07-13-2012, 05:35 AM

Sorry to state the obvious, but heater burn?? I don't see how else any aquatic creature could display smouldering / smoking short of self combustion Maybe he was fighting with another one and got friction burn?? Very strange!. Sorry you lost him he looked really cool and that duckweed looked really cool on him.

**AquaCats** · 07-13-2012, 05:44 AM

I looked online and found videos of puffer eating those. When they bit down, it emitted that "smoke." It's apparently the insides of the crab expelling from the body.

Based on that, my guess is that he was severely injured by a tankmate.