My red fiddler crab died

[kappa]

I thought that I had taken care of my red fiddler crab with the best of care, but I was wrong. Almost everyday I would take her out of the tank with a small net while she sits on the substrate or climbs up the wall. I take her out for 30 minutes to a hour and leave her in a bowl of substrate and some tank water, then I put her back into the tank. The water in the bowl is not high enough to submerge her completely, and is just there to keep her mouth moist. Everything has been going great for quite some time now , but now I get to the part on how she died a nasty but fast death. My fiddler crab was able to climb out of her little 2 inch high steel bowl, fall off the 18 inch high table, scurry across 18 feet of my living room, got outside the front gated door, and then got stomped by somebody's shoes out on the brick walk way. My dad took her inside and said to me while he had the crab in his hand, "is this your crab?" I took a look, and it was my crab. When I looked at her red shell, it was crushed in, but everything else was intact. He then tossed her in the trash but I took her out and decided to give her proper burial. I would go to the beach and bury her in the tide pool sand, underneath the crushed shells. Where was I the whole time? I was cooking.....

[xcajx]

sorry kappa:( ... why were you putting it in the bowl?

[kappa]

because I did a research on red fiddler crabs that the lfs was selling and found out that they are not long lived when they cannot come out of the water every once in a while.

[AReeferIsExpensive]

yea..it's useless IMO. i think about it this way.....its a cheap, beautiful, bright red crab thats fairly cute and stays small. If they actually stayed alive a LOT of ppl would have them, i mena, think about how many ppl own emeralds, who are ugly (sorry~ =/). But noone hasem in their home tanks, you only hear about them at the LFS, where half of them are laying around dead. When ppl do bring them home, they die...which happened twice to me.

To me thats proof that its just not going to work out, know what i mean?

 

well...good try! sorry things didnt work out~

Try getting a really cool porc. crab. There are some NICE looking ones out there that are red/blue..etc

[Raindogg]

Has anyone tryied keeping these guys right, IE in a salt or brackish watter tank where they can crawl out of the the water at will. Fiddlers really need a tank specially designed for them. Would they live longer in this case.

 

Not to knock your care of the fiddler Kappa, you did far better than most people do and actually did research on the thing...keeping them is very difficult....but I largely suspect this this just because they need their own, specialized setup. Aside from that they might be quite hardy..think of the extremely they go through.

[ghostbear29]

Kappa sorry for the loss but have you tried using those Penn plax shelving systems for a beach type of thingy. When I was a kid, I used to raise salamanders ( yes....i am a dork) and the shelf thingy was held to the glass with suction cups. You fill in the shelf with sand and viollla, instant basking beach area for your crab!!!! might just work bro.

[kappa]

The red fiddler crab is definately my favorite crab. Although some could not keep them successfully, I wanted to to try to keep the crab alive. I can not find that any information on the red fiddlers survivability in a reef tank. I can barely find any information on the red female fiddler crab at all! Most of the information I found are only about the male crab which has one big claw that suppose to resemble the fiddler.

 

Now that my crab is dead in a way I never expected, I am sad that I didn't take precautions to keeping the crab from climbing out of the bowl, by using a straight wall bucket. I am very dissapointed with myself because now, nobody will no how long a fiddler crab can survive in a reef tank with some care, and attenative actions.

 

ARIE, to bad eh? I got one emerald crab and everything went fine. The second crab I added was a bit bigger and aggresive. My cleaner shrimp now has 6 shorter antanaes.:*(

 

I am thinking of trading my bigger emerald crab in for a smaller one.

[AReeferIsExpensive]

yea, its too bad about the lack of info we have on red fiddlers in marine captivity. They are a nice, colorful addition too.

i LOOOVE my boxer crabs. Ever considered one of those?

[Raindogg]

I'm just wondering if a reef tank is a proper home for these guys. Their from mud flats, saltmarshes and mangrove swamps...very different from a reef.

[kappa]

Actually, because you recomended a boxer crab ARIE, I went out and bought one a week ago. It looks kinda creepy, and looks more like a spider than a crab. The boxer crab looks cool with the hexigonal graphics on it's back, but it's body is small, and legs are thin like a spider with no posterior.

 

I wonder what will happen over time when the two tiny anenome grows bigger? Will the crab die?

[AReeferIsExpensive]

They are creepy but they do a cool dance with their arms sometimes.

The anemones dont really seem to grow......Ive had mine for a while and havent seen much growth but i constantly see him picking up food w/ them which means they should be a lot bigger~

 

 

Ive ALWAYS wondered about these guys-

Ive always been curious to know where they came from.

 

If these are captive raised, where are the breeders getting the little anemones from to give to them? And if these are wild caught, where do these little guys go in the HUGE ass ocean to find their anemones? And in the wild do they normally have both?strange.......