Hitchiker on wall Hammer

[not ecooper]

I have a funny little (crab?) embedded in the hard wall of my hammer coral. Two of them, actually. I bought the coral today knowing there was one there, but then it is now obvious there are actually two. I was unable to capture a picture, but they use a feather like claw to sweep out of their hard calcium hole of the skeleton I'm assuming to sweep out food. Can you identify these for me? Is it possible I might be able to maintain a further colony of these crabs since I already have two of them, they might reproduce? Thank you very much!

[DensityMan]

Sounds like you just described a live barnacle, actually. They are filter-feeders and in my experience are rather transient in aquaria (mine 1" diameter barnacle lasted 5mos; I was feeding both cyclop-eeze and DT's during that time).

Hope that helps,

[rshimek]

Hi,

DM sounds to be right on the money. [thanks] They sound like Pyrgomatid barnacles. These are typically found on many corals.

The odds of successful reproduction with them are somewhere between zero and none. They have prolonged planktonic feeding stage, and such larvae do not survive in our tanks.