Need help, AGAIN!

Alright, so we definately have a pistol shrimp in the tank, suffice to say he is getting out, the popping sound is driving me nuts. On the heels of this a crab about the size of a half dollar appeared last night. He seems harmless enough but its still kinda scary. I know its hard to identify w/out a picture but I would appreciate some guessing! He is dark red with white joints his "arms" are slightly hairy and his pinchers are small compared to his size, they are also red not black like some pictures I have seen! Any ideas??? Also, we moved some of our live rock around and discoved three what looks to be serpant stars. Two of them were a grayish blue and one was white and red, all about the size of a quarter, is this good or bad. We are probably just being over sensitive to things but after our starfish fell apart. Everything is a suspect!

 

The small serpent stars are probably just some mini brittle stars. They are a good thing. They will scavenge and eat whatever left over they can. They wont get much bigger than that. As for the crab, like you said, without a pic its kind of hard to ID. Do a google image search for red reef crab, i didnt and i saw at least 4 or 5 good pics, maybe that can help you ID it.

Marc.

 

I can't tell you much about the other critters but the pistol shrimp will be hard to get as they hide most of the time. Mine never comes out but I understand how annoying the sound can get. I would get one of those traps at the LFS and put some meaty treats in it to temp him into it. I would try for night time because that seems to be when they are more likely to come out. Good luck with it and let us know how it goes. If you can remove the rock and there is nothing on it I hear that squirting carbonated water into it's den will work to remove it and mantis. Do a search on google or here and see what other ideas will do.