feeding my crabs

[troy1976]

i have a newly cycled tank and just added 2 emerald crabs and 2 horseshoe crabs, was wondering about feeding them shrimp and is frozen shrimp that we eat the same as what they eat. in other words can i feed them the frozen shrimp from the grocery store. thanks in advance for the reply

[rageybug]

Both the emerald crabs and horseshoes will eat the same shrimp we eat, just cut it up into small chunks. The emerald crabs will also benefit from dried seaweed. I assume you will be adding fish at some point, and the crabs will eat leftover fish food too.

I don't know what size tank you have or how you have it set up. The emeralds will require lots of hiding places in the LR and the horseshoes will need a good deep sandbed to dig through. Female horshoes can grow to 12" so you want to have a decent size tank to house them.

[troy1976]

i know about the horseshoe crabs how big they get but i only have a 29g tank so i was thinking that when they got too big i would try to take to LFS i also have about 25 lbs LR and another 15 curing too be put in in the next 3-4 days and my sand bed is quite deep, but they all seem to be happy i just put them in yesterday and they went right to eating which is good except ever since i put the horseshoes in one have them has been burried he came out for a short time then just burried himself again. i will try to get some pics posted soon. i was reading up on those horseshoes and it said minimum tank was 30 g so figured 29 was pretty damn close

[rageybug]

I would not worry about the horseshoe hiding in the sand. Give it a few days to adjust and then it will come out.

A 30 gallon is the minimum recommended tank size for one horseshoe. You have two, plus the LR will eat up half the tank so you are looking at 2 horseshoes in 15g. When full grown, a female could be 12" but that does not include her tail. She could be 20" long or more... will she have room to turn around???

Also, not many LFS will like taking in a large crab like that. They may not have room for it and may have a hard time selling it.

I'm not trying to tell you you made a poor decision getting the horseshoes, just giving you a head's up on what you may encounter down the road. Maybe a larger tank will be an option when the time comes to move them?

Some pictures would be great!

[troy1976]

yes a larger tank might be the way to go after setting this one up and putting in the LR and reading alot on here i already am wanting a larger tank. but that is sometime down the road.