horseshoe crabs...

Are the cutest buggers ever.



Thats not my crab in the picture. I don't have one yet but I plan on getting one very soon, after I build my DIY acclimation box.

LFS says they are great in reef tanks, won't hurt a thing and will clean up the sand. I did some searching around the forum and found some other people have had little luck with them. I've also checked the prices online and they are going for like $14.99 for a small one.

A small horseshoe crab from the LFS is only $4.99, and it seems to be doing great there. Possibly because I live in florida and horseshoe crabs only have to travel about 100 miles total from the ocean to the supplier to the store?



If he gets too big for my tank can I just put him back into the ocean? Only issue I see with that is he could be exposed to a disease in my tank and then transmit it back into the ocean... but I think that would be a non issue since everything came from the ocean to begin with.



I guess what I am getting at is: I freakin' love horseshoe crabs. They are adorable.

 

I say go with it man! With a 98 as long as you have plenty of sand room they should be fine. I've seen them sold on reef cleaning sites, and they spend most of their time in the sand unless it's feeding time. My mom grew up in Miami so I get to hear all kinds of stories of her playing with them growing up. And mangroves. And snorkeling with barracudas (don't wear anything shiny).

 

cant see pic


i don't see any problem as long as you realize its gonna be a little bulldozer. and you probably will need to supplement its food if when its bigger because a small one will probably demolish all the life in your sand bed.

 

Thats awesome. Unfortunately I live farther north (around orlando) where there is no good snorkeling :-(. I do see lots of horseshoes around though.

 

Thats weird. It works fine for me using Google's Chrome browser but when I tried viewing the page with Internet Explorer it wouldn't work either... here is the link to the picture if you want to see it. http://lh3.ggpht.com/_b3n8R2_VEh4/RlDWbnz8l3I/AAAAAAAAACc/2H03urqAcVU/DSCN0220.JPG

Anyway I have lots of sand I need pushed around anyway and nothing else small enough for him to push.

I don't mind supplementing his diet. I'm buying him more because I think they are awesome than for a cleaner.

Will it eat my copepods and stuff of that nature?

 

I personally don't think a horseshoe crab is right for a 98. They eat a lot of food, and they will bulldoze things around knocking rock and coral over. There are two problems with them eating all of the life in your sand bed which they probably will. One is they will run themselves out of food. The other is that that may diminish your water quality. All the life in the sand helps with this and something eating all of it certainly won't. If something has to travel 100 miles, I wouldn't put it in the ocean, as you probably have something from farther away in your tank, and if the crab picks this up, it could get into the ocean causing bad things. I'm not saying it will cause an invasive species to dominate your area, i'm just saying that as reef keepers, I think we have to be careful not to mix environments in the wild that we do in our tanks.

This is JMO. Best of luck if you get one.

 

im using firefox the like goes to a 404 page no image.

i think google is trying to pull something huh ;D

FIREFOX FOR LIFE

until something better comes out.

it probably would eat what ever it could catch

 

Ugh I tried to download the Firefox 3 and my Firefox crashed. So I'm stuck on Internet Explorer. Bah humbug!

You'd have to supplement it's diet with pieces of clam and shrimp, which is easy enough. I've heard stories of people having theirs eat out of their hand. If your rock is big enough, and it's touching the glass bottom so he can't get under it and cause it to collapse on himself, I don't see a problem with it.

What do you have as far as corals and other goodies that could potentially get damaged? Shrimp/Crabs (technically a horseshoe isn't a crab...) that "bulldoze" tend to not care what gets in their way. I think my Pistol Shrimp buried his own Goby in his old cave, and the little goby hasn't been seen for 3 days now. I've seen the fish go into the sand before, so I'm hoping he'll dig himself out when he gets hungry. If I see an ammonia spike I'll know what happend though.

 

I used to use firefox... until I installed the latest update and it doesn't work anymore. I didn't bother reinstalling it since I mostly use chrome.

Well I don't have anything in there for him to knock over. All my rocks are very big compared to him and sit directly on the glass with the sand around them. I don't have any corals for him to knock over either, although I will have some of those eventually.

Yeah I see what you mean. I spent so much money on live sand why put something in that will make it dead sand?

 

I have a baby horseshoe crab. I didn't see him for nearly a month. He comes out more often now, but still under the sand 95% of the time. He's the main attraction when he does come out. Very entertaining. He plays dead for a bit if I pick him up... stirs plenty of sand. $5 on Ebay... I ordered a bunch of stuff then so the shipping was going to be charged anyway. I haven't notice any growth in 2 months. He's maybe 2" long not including the tail. Most of my rocks are tied down so not much he can really move.