smileyfish

I have a little tank that i threw some natural seawater and some snails and crabs i got on the beach (no equipment). Can those snails or crabs go into the tank? Also what do i feed the crabs?

btate617

Be careful taking animals from the wild, great ways to introduce new disease to a tank.
If you have already done so, if and when you decide you don't want them any more, don't put them back where they came from. Simply kill them off.
But a tank with no equiptment isn't going to keep anything alive for very long.


Brian

10gallonmadness

No you can't. They will only live a short time then die without proper filtration, heaters, andwater tests.

smileyfish

are there like medications or additives that i could use to kill off any diseases they might have? i have the animals for just a cool little biotope if you will that i can sort of study and see how the animals interact. Id love to become a marine biologist when i grow up so i love that sort of thing. But what do i feed them?

10gallonmadness

Well you won't need to. They won't live long enough for you to feed them.

btate617

I wouldn't worry about feeding them.
Without a filter, heater, everything needed to run a tank, they probably won't be alive for their next feeding.
If you are really into marine biology, research what you are trying to do first, then do it the right way.
The way you are going about it now is pretty bad, hopefully you realise it.

Brian

smileyfish

ha, alright well thank you

im aware they will die, and i only have one small crab with like 10 snails, among about 1,000 that were on a rock. i just started a 40 gallon tank so my allowed budget wont really expand to another setup.

Hello. I merged these two posts.
Thanks!
Ken

btate617

I really enjoy breeding fish and over the years I couldn't even begin to tell you how many fish I have lost to aggression or other reasons, so I really don't get too teary eyed over loosing a fish.
It's not that you took 10 from a colony of 1000, the point is you can't keep them alive the way things stand now. even if you have a 500 gallon tank, without the needed equiptment they simply won't live. You have a dog, go put it in your car with the windows up in the sun for a few days, it won't live like that will it? Same thing you have done with the crab and snails. they just won't live because you threw them in a vat of salt water. Seems odd coming from someone who says they like marine biology, you want to study them you say, dead or alive?

Brian

gremlin

Are you close enough to the beach to study them where they live? That way you can actually study their natural behavior and not the stressed behavior they would show in a tank. You could probably catch them long enough to measure how big they are, how much they way, stuff like that - then put them back where you found them. It would be better if you had some way to tell which crab or snail was which. Then you could monitor its growth - measure it once a week to see how much it has grown, does it grow faster in the spring or summer, that kind of thing. Watch what it eats in the wild, does it prefer one type of algae over another - that kind of thing. If they like to hide under rocks, maybe make a rock ledge that would help to shelter them and make it easier to study them. I wouldn't mix them with your current tank, and be very careful to disinfect any equipment that may be used from one to the other to avoid any disease. Also, try not to keep any of the wild ones for more than a couple of hours at the very most. It is actually better if you can get any measurements and such right at the beach and then turn them loose within a few minutes. That would be the least amount of stress and the smallest chance for contamination.

All that said, studying a species in the wild is really quite fun and you can learn a lot. You just have to remember to respect the animals that you are studying.

smileyfish

dead wouldnt be bad because i could dissect. Wether you guys are mad or not im just gunna keep these critters, i dont feel really all that bad.

btate617

Just an idea, why not disect them at the water they came from. Study them and throw them back for others to eat.

I am not mad you just seem to be doing things a bit irresponsible for someone who says they are into marine biology. I would study what an animal eats before grabbing one then coming here and asking what to fed it if I were into the sort of thing you say that you are.

Brian

10gallonmadness

I agree with Btate617.

sirdarksol

First of all, let's remain respectful to each other, whether or not we agree.

Now, as far as the original topic goes, those animals are going to die unpleasant deaths. In an unfiltered tank, the ammonia will build up, slowly destroying blood vessels and delicate tissue until the animal dies.

This will make dissection nearly pointless, as the damage to the body will render the animal far different from others of its kind. Aside from that, these animals will be much different from professionally prepared animals, which often have die marking certain organs/blood vessels.
Lastly, do you have a lot of experience with animal anatomy? Without guidance for the first dozen or so dissections, you generally make a huge mess of a dissection, making it a wasted effort. Much easier to take a few biology/anatomy classes and then start buying prepared animals if you wish to continue dissecting things.

You can always do what you want, of course. I simply think it will be a better learning experience if you give the animals a good home so that you can watch them grow, eat, breed, etc...

Betafish305ca

I'm curious as to how this is going? Are they still alive? Were the put in the tank? Or have they died?

pepetj

Jumping in the subject: I do keep wild caught inverts in my recently cycled Nano Reef tank. I have a fragment of soft coral in it as well.

They were collected in and around a reef platform that I have easy access to in a somewhat isolated intertidal area in the Caribbean basin, Hispaniola Island, where I live.

Among the inverts I have a few chitons, keyhole limpets, tiny crustaceans, feather worms, a small (maybe two but one is missing) crab, as well as several species of snails. I have a fair amount of macroalgae in the maintank (e.g. a beautiful red branch-structured, two caulerpa species).

I introduced some during the nitrite spike final stages. Two of them died (a chiton, a key hole limpet). I keep an out-of water area for them to climb out since they come from intertidal zone.

I am figuring out how to build a trap to catch a peaceful blennie...

Pepetj
Santo Domingo

smileyfish

thats really cool. So can you do that without any sort of training or certification? Like could i go down to the bahamas and catch a crab or fish or something and take it? (not that i would without the proper shipping/equipment)

mommybaby295

hey smileyfish, how is your crab and snail experiment going?

smileyfish

ya, not so well. I decided to put them back because one of the crabs died. I couldnt really do much with them to get any info anyways. Maybe ill save up some money and set up a tank devoted to that.