new crabs reefsafe?? need advice

[nanafreak]

Hi I'm the proud owner of a 24g nanocube filled with corals ( orange polyps, elegance coral, flower pot, christmas tree, an electric scallop, 2 clowns, a gobi and another small red fish i can't really identify..also blue legged hermits and emerald crabs, turbo snails..

My question: I live in Los Angeles and went to the tidepool at the beach today and found hermits (pagurus hirsoticulus) and a small decorator crab (holopagurus pilosus). I found them really pretty and took them home for my tank. After I put the hermies and the decorator crab in I started to worry and ask myself if they'd harm my corals. The new hemies are much faster than my blue legged ones...the decorator crab just ran away and hid..
Wait I forgot the porcelain crab that i also put in ( Patrolisthes manimaculis)..it looks like a dark and less pretty version of an anemone crab..I hope it's as harmless as well..
Can anyone give me some advice if I can leave the newly aquired animals in my tank?

[mbbuna]

[welcome]

Pagurus hirsutiusculus is a temperate water crab, not really suitable for a tropical reef tank. i couldn't really tell you what it may do to your other inhabitants. now that its in your tank it cant be returned to where you found it for risk of introducing something foreign to your local waters.


holopagurus pilosus- google search turns up this crab as a hermit crab not a decorator crab. its also temperate like above.

Patrolisthes manimaculis- im not getting anything on this one, but if you got it from the same area then the same thing as above

[loosecannon]

That clam is going to need you to keep a eye on him .

[LeslieH]

All animals have a temperate range in which they can survive. They do best in the middle of the range; if they're forced to live at one of the extremes their systems become too stressed and they easily succumb to disease and stress. Tidepool animals have a wider range than most animals however temperate ones are still stressed by being in a tropical tank.

The Petrolisthes is harmless. All members of the group are either detritus or filter feeders. The hermits however are scavengers & carnivores so they could damage/kill other things in the tank.

mbbuna's right. Animals from other areas can carry diseases and parasites that the local ones don't have. That can cause severe problems if there are no predators that will kill the parasites or if the local animals have no resistance. The west coast commercial abalone industry was nearly destroyed when someone brought in an abalone from South Africa which carried parasites. The parasites were carried out to sea and infected snails along the coast which prompted a multi-million dollar clean up. So please don't put the new guys back into the tidepool.

[DrBegalke]

i would pass on those, they are from much different climates...