Are Gall crabs good or bad?

[Chicken_Biscuit]

Found a Gall crab in my elegance coral. Wanna know people opinion on these things. Was it a good call to remove it or are they harmless? Caught some orange in the middle of a green bubble.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

They're considered bad:

It has an obligate relationship with the coral - so I doubt the crab would survive long without it.

That said, gall crabs are considered parasites; they shouldn't kill a coral, but they burrow into the skeletons - so if it's a big crab and a small coral, it's a bad combination. If the coral is a decent size, then the crab should just cause a mild deformity; problems generally only arise from algae that grows on the deformed coral skeleton that sticks out through the dead skin.

So, basically, if the coral is big, it'll be fine; if the coral is small, it could die; if the coral is medium-sized, it'll probably be unhappy, but it should survive just fine.