Porcelain Crab
Porcelain Crab
Currently unavailable
We do not take backorders on live fish, invertebrates or plants. Livestock arrives on the shipping schedule our suppliers and the weather allow, so we will not promise a date we cannot keep.
What is in the tanks changes from week to week. Ask us and we will tell you what is in and what is coming, or check back shortly. Visit us or get in touch.
Free local pickup at our Lethbridge store. Livestock guarantee
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Porcelain crabs (Petrolisthes species, catalogued here as Petrolisthes violaceus) are small, flattened, glossy-shelled crustaceans that look like true crabs but sit closer to squat lobsters. The feature worth watching is the pair of feathery mouthparts they unfurl into the current, sweeping plankton and fine particles out of the water column all day.
Aquarium care
- They are filter feeders. Place them where there is moderate water movement, and support them with fine foods such as phytoplankton, rotifers or a powdered reef blend.
- Provide rock crevices and flat undersides; they wedge into tight gaps and rarely roam far.
- Drip acclimate and keep salinity steady. Like other invertebrates they will not tolerate copper.
- They shed their shell as they grow, and may drop a limb when badly startled, regrowing it over later moults.
- Generally peaceful, and they do not damage corals.
- Wrasses, hawkfish and other invertebrate hunters may pick them off.
A quiet, low-impact choice for an established reef with peaceful fish such as clownfish, gobies, cardinalfish and small wrasses. Because they rely on suspended food rather than scavenging, they do best in mature systems that already carry some live plankton.
Stock rotates with each marine order. Local pickup at our Lethbridge store; more invertebrates and saltwater fish in store.