I really don't do anything special. I'm very much from the school of "Okay, you're on your own now!". The hardest part of crabbing for me was realizing there was nothing more I could do to help them other than offer a good environment. I've only ever lost one crab after purchase, and that was the second crab I ever bought - I'm still not sure exactly what happened, but when I woke up the next morning it was dead in the the food dish and it was leaking something from it's abdomen. I've never experienced PPS with any other crab, and they've come from 5 different stores! Only one of the 5 had proper conditions (where I got my last Es) - the others where kept on gravel, or in a completely dry tank, or on cold wood chips with anoles for bug control.curious_kitty wrote: you have to tell me how you set up the ISO tank(maybe with pictures????)
The ISO is the same one I put my molting crabs in - it's mostly sand for the PPs, there's a small KK filled with sand for the Es, and then a small ziploc container with EE for any PP that wants it. It's at 84 degrees, there's a night-glo bulb for heat and no direct lighting since it's beneath the main tank. Humidity stays around 84% as well. The ISO stays bare unless there's a topside injured crab.
When I have a new crab it gets a bath in strong marine water - if it's fully mobile I leave it at that, if it's not mobile it gets a freshwater bath as well. If the new crab is fully mobile, it gets large water dishes. If it's not fully mobile then it gets shallow dishes in the form of the bottom of large prescription bottles so the crab won't drown. (My vet does pre-filled syringes for my cats, so they come in ginormous bottles!) I've used plastic bases of mint containers with good results, too!
They'll get whatever fruit I'm feeding that night, along with dried seaweed, cuttlebone, fresh shrimp, and then of course the Kix. I'll also put in a selection of shells in case they want to change. At least one cocohut is provided so they can seek shelter if they want it. (They normally bury down under the cocohut, so I'll keep moving it around so they aren't all digging in on top of each other.)
What normally happens is they wait until after I've gone to bed to move around. When I get up in the morning they've changed shells, ate one or two pieces of Kix, and have already buried down to molt. In a month or two they're done molting and have all their legs back.
If after 48 hours the crab is showing no signs of wanting to dig, they get moved up to the main tank. I've yet to have a missing leg crab that hasn't molted immediately on me.
Most of the others have wanted to molt immediately as well - especially if they were showing signs of trying to dig in at the store.I really have to agree with this as well. Having had two Es die in PP attacks, I'm not exactly comfortable with them being in the same tank. Since separating them, both colonies have been much happier and seem to be much less stressed. I know that people will get Es in order to make their PPs more active, but I think that burst of activity is a major sign that they're actually stressed! Crabs should just hang out and look stoic all day - constantly running around or moving their antenna probably isn't good for them in the long run. Just my two cents.kgbenson wrote:I have seen many posts on this and other forums that suggest that most can be housed together. AS time goes on I am becoming less and less of a fan of this unless they are truly sympatric, both in therms of geography and habitat use