Hi
Just bought 2 tropical crabs today for a bit of a change in my tank.
I dont know much about them and was hoping you could all tell me what you know.
Thanks
Sanch
Could do with a description or pic to help you here!
They will destroy your plants ( if you have any )... They will attack your bottom-dwelling fish... and they need a dry-land retreat... ( a rock or piece of wood that juts out of the water )...
This website will come in very useful...
Destroy plants??? i must admit its the first time i heard that!, though to be fair Rainbow Crabs can be destructive. if your crabs are Redcrab, they are small and not really a threat, but sick fish are at risk. though fiddler crabs can be little sods, and i would not put them with anything. lol the info is for Fiddler crab. and i feel must be treated with scepticism, it makes no mention of the fact the crab needs land, and states that they are freshwater. this would leave me with the impression, that the value of that PDF is less than the sheets of paper i flush down the toilte!
Lfs employees arent great sources of information.
so it def needs a place out the water? i dont want to kill it
yep they need dry land, mine use the tank more like a bath than a place to live. and finally most tropical crabs, kept by lfs are brackish!!!!!! the above mentioned Rainbow crab is true fresh water. like the others though, it is really a land crab, and even metal tongs are at risk when they are in the tank.
in short Crabs on the whole are trouble with fish. that said i and others keep Redcrab in community's. but it is our risk, so be warned if you try, things could go wrong. All the crabs i have seen in the trade are LAND crabs, and as such need land to live well. most are also brackish, but this can be got round with a little bath of brackish water, i use 1g of salt to 1ltr of water. Rainbow crabs are fresh water, but get bigggg 6 to 8 inches across
and are destructive and deadly to all things