magyarhammer
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Not sure how many on forum have had experiences with stone crabs. Mostly you hear about oh crap there is a stone crab in my reef tank!
Any surely there is reason for concern. I just wanted to share my story of Dexter the stone crab as the he had brought us all much joy.
He joined our aquarium by hitching a ride on a piece of broken off sargassum that often washes up on north florida shores. He was microscopic at the time, as we saw no sign of him till month later and then he was only slightly larger than a bean. And then he molted. And grew, and molted, and grew some more. His digs upgraded from 5 gallon, to 20 to 60.
He had a tank mate, a blue crab, that got along pretty well till the day dexter ripped of his front claws and ate them in front of him. Pretty hard core.
By the time he moved to the 60 gallon, I was mostly feeding him live clams, slightly smaller than baseballs that we got from the farmers market. I placed 2-3 in the tank and he would eat them over the course of a week. The ones not yet ripped apart happily filtered away not knowing what awaited.
The best part of the calm diet was what dexter did with the shells. Arranged them meticulously, one could even say obsessively into neat stack all around the tank. If you messed with a stack he would immediately come out and put it back as he had it. There was easily 100 lbs plus rock in the tank but most nights we would move all of it around as he got the tank just so. It was amazing to watch him work.
Sadly he passed recently… but he got got a good 2.5 years in which seems to be pretty good for stone crabs.
Stone crabs are the best, just not in a tank where you want to have even the least bit of input on how it is decorated.
Any surely there is reason for concern. I just wanted to share my story of Dexter the stone crab as the he had brought us all much joy.
He joined our aquarium by hitching a ride on a piece of broken off sargassum that often washes up on north florida shores. He was microscopic at the time, as we saw no sign of him till month later and then he was only slightly larger than a bean. And then he molted. And grew, and molted, and grew some more. His digs upgraded from 5 gallon, to 20 to 60.
He had a tank mate, a blue crab, that got along pretty well till the day dexter ripped of his front claws and ate them in front of him. Pretty hard core.
By the time he moved to the 60 gallon, I was mostly feeding him live clams, slightly smaller than baseballs that we got from the farmers market. I placed 2-3 in the tank and he would eat them over the course of a week. The ones not yet ripped apart happily filtered away not knowing what awaited.
The best part of the calm diet was what dexter did with the shells. Arranged them meticulously, one could even say obsessively into neat stack all around the tank. If you messed with a stack he would immediately come out and put it back as he had it. There was easily 100 lbs plus rock in the tank but most nights we would move all of it around as he got the tank just so. It was amazing to watch him work.
Sadly he passed recently… but he got got a good 2.5 years in which seems to be pretty good for stone crabs.
Stone crabs are the best, just not in a tank where you want to have even the least bit of input on how it is decorated.
