We ended up snagging a new millepora (along with a blue-throat trigger with the contingency that it's going right back to the store at the first coral nip)...

I've never seen one quite like it before. It's polyps are a bright light baby blue, but underneath it's a pale pink. It looks pretty wild... I'll have to get some photos up. If I had a nano in Stella's room it would be hard not to toss it in there with the girly baby colors

Looks like soon I'll be posting multiple pictures!

The milli had a hitchhiker. The shop called it a millepora crab when I bought it and insisted it was a good thing to have.

I've never heard of mille crabs, but assumed they meant acro crab. After extensive researching online, I still cannot find a mille crab but acro crabs will live in milles. The problem is, acro crabs are white with pale blue or purple coloring.

This particular little crab is hairy and brown, matching the description of a pest crab that eats acros. Conveniently enough, all of the stringy polyps around the center of the mille's base are MIA, and it's losing coloration down there.

The top of the coral is still vibrantly colored and the tops and outside area of each branch still have stretching polyps.

The crab is stuck in a specimen container until I can 100% positively confirm he's a nuisance and dispose of him. He was a royal PITA to get out, even with needlenose pliers

If its not white and smooth I would just flush it, even then I would be a little worried about adding it to my tank. All the millie colonies we get in at the LFS generally have one or 2 crabs on them which do not live because we dip our corals for unwanted guests.

I think you hit the nail on the head - there are more polyps and they are extending further without the crab. The area where the crab hung out still looks worse then the rest of the coral but all I can think to do is give it time.

There's still blue in the upper 1/3rd of the coral and polyps are extending all over (outside of the crab's original hang-out) but much more of the coral's not pale blue.

I'm hoping this doesn't turn into our first big SPS casualty... (a couple "accidental frags" i busted off colonies have choked, but most of the accidental SPS frags and all the colonies have been growing fine until possibly this one)