OMG crab babies?!?

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fishb0ne

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Jan 7, 2007
Messages
185
Location
Nebraska
This morning I woke up to a 5.5g brackish full of what looks like crabs in their initial planktonic phase. There's thousand of them floating and swimming around, little brown-black dots. I house one single female red claw crab in there because she's not getting along with my fiddlers. She tore them up all the time.
A little story behind the issue. I've had a female red claw crab [gaetice depressus] for about 5 months now. I then decided to set-up my 75g as a crabitat. I introduced here and then I went out and bought another, what I thought, female red claw crab. Small red pinchers, definitely not a male I thought. Well, after 3 days together the newly introduced has already lost a claw. Then, a fiddler female I introduced the day before has also lost 3 limbs and a pincher. So I decided to separate the female rcc I've had for 5 months and set her up into a 5.5 brackish tank. About a week later she started developing what looked like an egg sack. I dismissed the possibility but watched her carefully. She carried it around for about 2 weeks and then it disappeared. And this morning, 3 weeks after she "rid" of whatever that was, I've got this stuff floating around the tank.

Is it really crab plankton or something else? I really didn't introduce anything into the tank other than some anacharis which my crab promptly proceeded to give a haircut to.
 
Congratulations my butt, guys. I have no means to raise the little buggers!
I know there's an article out there with someone raising rccs but from what I understand the plankton need saltwater. I'll let nature take it's course with this one :(
 
fishb0ne said:
Congratulations my butt, guys. I have no means to raise the little buggers!
I know there's an article out there with someone raising rccs but from what I understand the plankton need saltwater. I'll let nature take it's course with this one :(

Sure you do, add a fish... live food, problem solved.
 
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