Freshwater crabs

[Jmrwiggly]

Hi all,

I was given 2 freshwater crabs and want to know the do's and don'ts. I have a 75g tank with 4 types of tetras, a cory cat and a candy stripe pleco. I was told that the crabs need a small amount of salt added to the water. Any help would be great.

John

[Khuligirl93]

I'm guessing you're referring to fiddler crabs? Unfortunately they are commonly sold to customers as freshwater, but they're actually brackish, and they need access to the surface.

Research fiddler crabs. Not freshwater.

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[gemach7]

Only fully aquatic freshwater crabs I know of are:
Thai mini crabs
Panther crab (get quite large)

All others require some land.
And the common fiddler and red claw crabs as posted above are brackish.



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[54seaweed]

Originally Posted by Jmrwiggly

Hi all,

I was given 2 freshwater crabs and want to know the do's and don'ts. I have a 75g tank with 4 types of tetras, a cory cat and a candy stripe pleco. I was told that the crabs need a small amount of salt added to the water. Any help would be great.

John

As everyone said above these crabs are brackish , they also need places to climb out of the water to breath in your 75g there's no where to climb out.
these type of crabs do best in something like a 10g tank with a 4 inch water level along with lots circulation also plenty of rock for them to climb on and a tight cover as they are great escape artists ,

another thing you should be aware of you have scaleless fish in your tank
your pleco and also your cory cat these type of fish don't do well with salt.
I'm glad you asked as you could have had a catastrophe on your hands

[Khuligirl93]

+1 on these guys being escape artists. I used to work for an aquarium store and after we got a shipment of fiddler crabs, every morning when we opened, we would find some on the floor all the way across the store! Not sure how they do it but somehow they can scale up smooth glass walls...


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[Jmrwiggly]

Thanks for all the info. I don't have the extra $ to setup another tank. This is my plan of attack. I lowered the water level about 5 " this allowed some of my driftwood to be out of the water. The crabs found that out real fast Next I have a small 2.5g plastic tank that i plan on cutting the height down and putting sand in it. Then placing it inside the 75g so the top will be out of the water. I will arrange the driftwood so there will be excess to the small tank.

John