Clibanarius tricolor (blue-legged hermit crab) talk

[ghosty3]

Hi,

The C. tricolor lives in shallow waters of the Carrebian so I chose a gravel bed with some dead rock. He's very active at 21 degrees and eats a pellet of crustacea food a day. Yesterday he kicked the leftover food over a rock.

I wonder if I can upgrade the water (reef water salt) with some corals or fish, but I do not know which ? Something else maybe ? Living Rock ?

 

[ghosty3]

Ok, I found some Carribean Reef sites, so excuse me for my stupidity for asking, but I only have a reef setup by the salt mix, I am probably going to put in something from his shallow water habitat, although I have a 60x30x30cm (54 liters.) tank. If it connects here's great site : http://reefguide.org/carib/index25.html

I am going to try to put in small pieces of living rock, keep track of the water quality, each 14 days a piece.

There's already algae growing from day 1, I have him for 4 days now, he's not too active except in the morning but by seeing pictures of the underwater world of the Carribean I see what I can do.

The tank just isn't big enough to make a fish habitat at least 100 meters below in the corner of the tank but it's a challenge here and there.

 

[ghosty3]

He didn't eat this morning and moved his legs and antennas slower. I poured in a half bottlescrewtop of aquasafe and he is moving much faster now.

There's not enough water current. I am going to get myself a powerhead as my internal filter flow is weak. Whirling the water somewhat helps to raise his avtivity it seems

 

[ghosty3]

There's not enough water current. I am going to get myself a powerhead as my internal filter flow is weak. Whirling the water somewhat helps to raise his avtivity it seems

I have to correct myself here for further notice :

A Clibanarius X lives in tidal areas, mangroves if you like. this means it's still a salt-water animal but he has more brackish water conditions, which is stagnating water, therefor, say in between treestumps and dead rock he has his habitat.

With spring tides in 'hurricane regions' such as the Carribean he gets onto this kind of water.

Note that I give this advice only for Clibanarius, not the commonly sold red-legged hermit crabs.

This means I am not going to get him a powerhead. Mangove means "strangle" in Spanish, so leave your green weed food a while and the conditions become better as this is stagnant water.

HTH

 

[ghosty3]

Carribean tidal zones where he comes from just raise the water level at high tide.

Now my C. Tricolor lives on top of the bottom level, so he cleans dead rocks
(where algae grow on) which are above the stagnant murky water. He sits
on his rock, eats there (by dropping the pellets next to him) and I am going to buy some more climbing features so he can get off the dregs.

As you can see in the following pictures from the Carribean, he climbs up so does not go into the dregs of salt water and swampy grounds.

In the second picture you see he can venture onto more tidal reefy zones.

Imagine that the bottom of the above is enormously dregged with salt, brackish water and bacteria and algae growth even though it is dark.

 

[ghosty3]

Mangroves of the Carribean, here you can see that the water is green. My water in my tank is also green in the bottom quarter but it is clear above.

 

[ghosty3]

Here's how I figured out his green water on the bottom :

I have aquarium gravel which stood in cellar in the tank for 9 years (1 cm bottom gravel, standard aquarium gravel in a 60x30x30cm tank). I cleaned out the dead spiders and webs with a vacuum cleaner but left the bottom alone.
I did this because I wanted to have some hermit crabs, which are detrivores (eat detritus, zooplankton, phytoplankton, spirulina and algae.) Now after a week I have a green shine on my bottom aquarium gravel. My C. tricolor does not like the bottom but this comes from the fact that there are spiderwebs, and all kind of cellar detritus on the bottom which is very good for "fungal bloom". As it got greener he ventures to the side of his hideout (he almost climbed in the hole hanging upside down yesterday

He sits on clean surfaces above that green bottom. He even cleans his place from algae.

Reef salt mix is very aggressive in such conditions.

I must say I started out my tank after 6 hours by adding 1.4 kg of reef salt mix to 14 gallons tank filled with water. I put in the cleaned filter of my gold fish aquarium (which survives in clean water without a filter.) which does 200l/h but stops spitting in current after a day as the small sucking compartiment gets full.
Then I put in the tricolor after 10 minutes by mixing the water of his travel pack with my tanks' water.

I do not have much money, so I only have one dead rock where he sits on, but I receive my paycheck tomorrow and I am going to get him some more "decor".

After 5 days, I got 9 coffee cups out of the tank and added 2.5 liters treated with tetra aquasafe (2 drops, non-salted) and the water got a bit more clear, I did this to make for a stream of high tide, I did this in the evening and he was scared of the works so I put out the lighting soon afterward.

This is how I have him at 6 days now.

 

[ghosty3]

I forgot to tell you that I do not have a warmth element in the tank, my room temperature is 21-23 degrees : high temperatures cause enormous differences with the reef salt mix, fin rot, that I know (due to salt dregs). Now as I told you the tank is 9 years old, there is a dead thermostat in it and a submerged filter compartiment which does not work anymore but functions as what I call a compost compartiment. It's threecolored carbon foam, which has run 9 years ago.)
He was not as active at 21 degrees so I cranked up my heater to 23 degrees (Celcius) and the tank has a 30x30cm side at about a meter from the radiator.
Thereby and by dropping his food (I bought crustacea food with spirulina additions for him) next to him, or at least where he sees it he is now active. I feed him after half an hour of light in the morning.
The lights are directly above the water, no glass in between.

About the compost compartiment : there are aerobic and anaerobic bacteria which at worst case produce ammonia and carbondioxide. This is why I use tetra aquasafeto lower chloramine. It is well suited for fresh and salt water systems. Chloramine as the word says is NH4Cl. NH4 => NH3 (ammonia)

 

[ghosty3]

For the explanation of spider webs in the tank (leftover after vacuuming, crap at the bottom of the tank), there are proteins inside it, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_silk

Spider legs get hollowed out as the reef salt mix bacteria eat the 'meat'.

 

[ghosty3]

I told you I put in 2.5 liters of aquasafe and fresh water as I thought my water should be lighter.

the thing is he was less active when he got up this morning, so I poured in 5cl of reef salt mix there where he sat the most. He immediately became more active (what I call speedy antenna moves.) Apparently you can rescue him very quickly but you have to be firm someimes, I only have him for 6 days now and he's doing all right again. Don't be scared to change such water parameters, remember this is stagnant water, therefor.

 

[ghosty3]

The C. tricolor was very scared of me this morning as I changed the water yesterday by removing the cover and aquarium lights. He didn't eat his pellet so I poured in 1 coffee cup of reef salt mix and he is doing better.

To be clear, you shouldn't harras him with your own activity, never remove lights and so on as he gets quite a big shock in his nervous system and little brain. He's also cleaning his eyes which means probably Ca deposit on them, so watch out with tap water, if you think to make your water brackish.

To stress this point out again, if you want to keep one, your water needs to be green, must have some white and green fungal bloom and there must be dregs of salt (I have less dregs and green glow of the bottom due to aquasafe tap water change of yesterday and he is active but does not move too much.) Remember the green mangrove water, see posts above, make sure he can climb all the way up to the water surface so he can choose his salinity level of your water.

 

[ghosty3]

I've found a medium to great site about the tricolor :

http://bioweb.uwlax.edu/bio203/s2014/meinholz_spen/habitat.htm

The best part is that you can see the tidal pools in the pictures in the above link which are his habitat. This is where I was a bit wrong, the tricolor lives in these pools instead of the mangroves. You just have to look up the temperatures, imagine the salt dregs, algae growth and vivarium.

My hermit once climbed up the silicon bindings in the corner of my tank, he was just sitting at the water level in the morning when I noticed him.

 

[sam.basye]

Post a pic of your tank. I'm curious to see what it is exactly you have created...

Blue legs don't just live in murky mangrove water. I've seen them by the thousands in the Florida keys in very shallow (6") rocky areas of clear water and heavy tidal action.
Also the picture you posted of the green water with the fish and mangrove is due to the seagrass and underwater photography. Not all color wavelengths pass through water which is why you need a color filter on your camera. The deeper you get, and the further away, the more blue/green the picture turns out.
The fish and sand up front in the bottom of the picture shouldn't be clear based upon your theories..

 

[ghosty3]

Post a pic of your tank. I'm curious to see what it is exactly you have created...

Blue legs don't just live in murky mangrove water. I've seen them by the thousands in the Florida keys in very shallow (6") rocky areas of clear water and heavy tidal action.

I might post a picture later on if I have more decor for him to climb on.

The trees of the Carribean beaches are very close to the shores, so if there's a river on an island it probably reaches inward where they can venture into mangroves created by the river estuary.

Also the picture you posted of the green water with the fish and mangrove is due to the seagrass and underwater photography. Not all color wavelengths pass through water which is why you need a color filter on your camera. The deeper you get, and the further away, the more blue/green the picture turns out.

It could be that the water is extremely clear but there's seagrass with algae on them due to the large daylight times with heavy sunlight and high temperatures even in the water.

The fish and sand up front in the bottom of the picture shouldn't be clear based upon your theories..

salt is heavy, and gets offset on the sand when e.g. the pool dries out.

 

[ghosty3]

Post a pic of your tank. I'm curious to see what it is exactly you have created...

He went into the dregs yesterday and had a salty face so I put him on the large rock, installed a filter with current halfway down the tank as my dregs thing didn't work out.

The aquarium at night :

 

[ghosty3]

I came back from work yesterday and he had salt on his face. My tank had very dirty water even after throwing the filter away and installing the old one, he didn't like th first one. It's full of dust with my 9 year old substrate (I didn't wash it, so there's the problem.)

I've put him in a small crabitat he's doing very very good now. Doesn't really manage to walk around on gravel . The gravel is ok though, it's white-and-black gravel. His majesty has his stone in it. He almost scared me to death

Anyway I can start my reef now, by cleaning everything out and waiting weeks to cure.

 

[ghosty3]

I'm going to keep him in his crabitat as it looks like he has to find his food where in a reef tank it would just be blown into the massive bacteria of live rock and powerheads. I lay him one pellet next to him.

The crabitat is a large bowl next to the stove, with a UV-lamp above it (not tube lamp) I just have to watch out for ammonia with leftover food.

He ate his pellet again yesterday and was swinging his claws, he's in excellent condition

 

[ghosty3]

My tank (pictured above) cycled, I have put him back in and he's walking around on the gravel. Thus everything is all right with him, I feed him at nightfall, he's more active while I'm not in my appartement.

As I am beyond cycling, he does not need much more salt although this is advised.