feehan

im guessing possible disaster, but i thought i would ask the question even if it is silly.

would it be a bad idea to have a red claw crab in with my apple snail?

Peffico

Well by looking at your tank it wouldnt even be suitable for your crab.

Crabs are great pets. I love my 8 fiddlers interesting animals.

But if you are to have a red claw you need the following.

1. Land- crabs need land to breath air
2. Brackish water- Most crabs ( and the red claw is no exception) need some sort of salt in their water to be happy. Marine salt is needed not aquarium salt
3. Some place to climb- Crabs love to climb.
4. A mate- Crabs are social animals and love to argue with each other.

Other than that they are an easy pet to take care of.

They need to be a species only terrarium. Anything else in there is asking for trouble unless you want your crabs to hunt food. In that case guppies should work.

Good luck I hope you get the crabs!

sirdarksol

Seconding peffico's info. In particular, #2 is important, as apple snails probably won't do well with salt.

There are numerous truly freshwater crabs. The problem is that, for some reason, they aren't really big in the aquarium trade. I guess it's easier to catch fiddlers and similar crabs and slap a "freshwater" label on them.

feehan

thank you both for your replies i have been looking for answers to this for a while. do you know here i could find a list of true freshwater crabs and what specifications i would need for my tank.

i think in reguards to crabs i will wait until i have more experience and then will progress to a crabarium


thanks again
feehan

sirdarksol

I've started on Wikipedia and entered "freswhater crab." That brings up a list of a number of crabs, some of which would work well in aquaria (such as the Maltese crab) if you could actually find them.

feehan

awesome cheers!