Fresh Water Crabs

[zoidbergs_baby]

Greetings...

I've had my tank for five weeks now and it's settling in rather nice. I've added guppies and a couple of sword tails and the water quality is stable - although a little cloudy after each 10-15% water change, apparently that can be normal?

The tanks cycled and the healthy bacteria seems to be levelling everything down.

I spotted a couple of fresh water crabs in my local shop, these really caught my eye - I've no real plants and would like to keep one in the tank at some point. I know they can sometimes eat the odd fish, but it's a 3" tank, rather large and I'm willing to take a gamble...

Anyone had any experiance of keeping these strange creatures?
I'm told they help to keep the tank clean being scavengers?

Kind Regards

ZB

 

[Tempestuousfury]

You can't put them in that tank. They need to be able to get out of the water, and it'd be hard for them to get to the surface in that tank even if you had a rock.

If you had a smaller tank you could provided they had a way to get out of the water.

 

[plecoperson]

you may have more of a reply if you post this in the oddball forum I had a good response about African Dwarf Frogs in there HTH!

 

[Tempestuousfury]

Oh yeah. There's actually a section for amphibians and crabs and the like. It would be better there.

 

[Teelie]

Not true about not being able to keep a crab in there. There's this thing called an Oasis though I can't find it anywhere online. It's literally a dry land underwater set up. It has an entrance underneath for the crab to climb into without letting water in and has an air tube hooked up to it so there is fresh air.

 

[nightlife20]

iv got two crabs, both in my 40gal community tank.. (wich i was advised against but it turns out they do a good job so nuts to that)


it depends what crabs u want, iv got two red clawed crabs, they find there own way out of the water onto the glass ledges just under my hood... they do quite well gettin a bit of air up there.. not all crabs need to get out of the water.


they eat mostly anythin (including fish if they can catch them... but thats only happned once to me with a sick fish).

in most lfs u will find they dont feed them often or enough... so whenand if u get them home make sure u put 2 algea wafers in or a nice amount of food (not too much!) they will also eat cucumber ect

please make sure ur lid has no holes as they would make great doubles for steve mcqueen in the great escape...

oh an btw they do shed, please dont do a me an think ur crabs died when all they have done is shed lmao for more info do a search in this forum about Red Clawed crabs


hth's

 

[djsupreme]

Thought I'd stick my 2pence into this discussion.

I've got a Red Claw crab in a community tank and he gets on just fine. He can shimmy up the heater or the air hose no problem to get out of the water for a breath of freash air. As Nightlife20 says, they are terrific escape artists so make sure all the holes for cables etc on your hood are blocked up.

My crab has never taken a fish. But if one was dead it would probably eat it.

Its quite cool, I feed him algea wafers by hand, I just pop my hand into the tank and offer him one, he comes up and takes it out my fingers! Really entertaining.

 

[NinjaSmurf]

Are they red claws? One local store sold me so called freshwater crabs that were fiddler crabs, one died and the other is now happy in it's Brackish tank. I should have known better, the woman is so high on the fumes from her dirty rat tanks in her store that she told me an Oscar would do fine in a thirty gallon tank, because the only grow as big as the tank. Thank god I didn't listen to her and end up with a stunted and probably dead oscar. Take it from me and make sure they really are fresh water crabs.

 

[Teelie]

They are freshwater though they prefer brackish. Most people find they thrive better in brackish although they'll do alright in freshwater. They can actually go all the way into fully marine water as well.