Dieing Red Claw Crabs

[JDWolf]

Just had a bit of a nightmare with my crab tank. Got it set up as a freshwater tank with access to land and brackish water for the crabs. An Angel fish that was in the tank with them got what i thought was a nice parasite infection (disc like parasites on skin and a nice swollen eye with something white coming out of it), so i got some meds (sodium chlorite based) for it and dosed the tank as per instructions on the bottle. The bottle didnt say anything about it affecting invertebrates.

Meds didnt work and the Angel fish just got worse until it was just floating on the surface of the water, barely breathing. Had to put him down. Then my male crab suddenly seemed to freeze and ended up dieing. Did a really big water change (around 95 %) and used water from my other tank to re fill it. Since then i've lost another 2 crabs and only have two left! And they both look like they arent going to make it!

I would think that the tank has another disease or something, but there is a couple of Gouramis in there that arent sick at all! Think there is still a trace amount of sodium chlorite in the tank thats killing the crabs, going to give them another big clean and put some activated carbon in the filter. Hopefully that will sort it and after another couple of standard weekly water changes i might risk getting some more crabs.

Morally of the story.......get a hospital tank for sick fish! Bugger!

 

[jourdy288]

Sorry to hear that.

 

[Shrimper]

I don't keep crabs so would try and get some more opinions but now the angelfish has died are there any more fish in the tank with them? I think it might be a good idea to make the whole tank brackish to try and save the two that are left if you can. If you do try this I wouldn't increase the salinity in one go but do it slowly over the next few days.

When you restock with crabs I would only get 1 to start with to make sure the tank is ok. I've read about people using tanks for shrimp that had once been treated with copper affecting the new shrimp when they were added months later, I'm certain it would affect a crab the same way. I'm not sure if its true or an old wives tale (should that be old shrimp keepers tale) but it would be better to be safe than sorry.

 

[JDWolf]

unfortuantly the last two crabs died. At the mo the tank has the Gouramis and some bleeding heart tetras in and they all seem fine.

As for getting some more crabs, going to leave it a couple of months and try and do at least one big cheap of the tank before i get anymore crabs. Will defiantly only get one and then see what happens.