Now I did it

[ScienceRulez]

I needed to get some rock for work, and my wife wanted to go long, so I took her. Big misteak! Now we are the proud owner of a horseshoe crab. It's only $10 she says....:headwally:

Well now that $10, means a refractometer, test kits, etc for my 10G tank here at home. When it was just live rock, bugs, and one scallop that came along on some LR pieces, I didn't really worry about it. So now the question is...How do I care for the horseshoe crab? What does it need in terms of light, food, substrate (tank is currently bare bottomed), etc?

 

[tomreefer]

take it back.. They need 180 gallons

http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=497+501+614&pcatid=614

 

[billdogg]

What he said. If you (or your wife) REALLY want one, prepare your system for it. THEN buy it.

lighting won't matter too much. You'll need at lest a couple inches of sand, teeming with life. And a very large tank. That cute little guy can, if provided the correct habitat, easily hit 24". It would barely be able to turn around in a 180.


hth

 

[ScienceRulez]

Thank you! On Monday it will make the trek with me to the 530 gallon tank at work. My little 10G gets to stay the way it was with live rock fragments and bugs.

 

[billdogg]

Please note that it's temperature range is 72 - 78, cooler than most reef tanks. They don't last too long in warmer water.

 

[Ron Reefman]

Please note that it's temperature range is 72 - 78, cooler than most reef tanks. They don't last too long in warmer water.

Really? I don't mean to say you are wrong, it's just that my experience doesn't agree with that. I just question that because we have a lot of them here in the Gulf of Mexico along SW Florida and they seem to like the estuaries and back bays that get over 90 degrees in the summer. Even the water near shore in the Gulf gets up to 90 for a couple of months.

That said, I've had many opportunities to collect a small horseshoe crab and would never put one in my tank. They do get really BIG!

 

[ScienceRulez]

The touch tank at work is 550 gallons so it will have plenty of room to grow nice and big in 76F water.

I was surprised when after I went to the car she came out a bit later with a horse shoe crab. "It was so cute". I was having visions of buying huge tanks and spending thousands in my head. The headaches I have had trying to get the tank here at the science center balanced out has pretty much turned me off on setting up my own marine system. I'm staying with fresh, or in the case of my guppies, slightly brackish, water. Disasters don't happen quite as fast or with the same ferocity.