Lined shore crab in an aquarium ?

[phossart]

Hi all, I caught a lined shore crab from the beach in California and have kept it alive for about 2 months quite easily now. Is it possible to keep it in a reef setup as I really enjoy their active/hiding movements and movements between land and water too. If not what reconmendations do you have for me

 

[smitten with ocean life]

@Paul B ?

 

[Paul B]

I would keep it in my reef but I'm weird.

My tank is old and if it crashes now, I'm still good.

I don't know how big that crab gets as I am in New York and know about eastern crabs. If it stays that size, it can't do much damage, but some crabs get a foot long.

For now, I would keep it in a separate tank. If, in a year, it doesn't grow too big then you could throw it in your reef.

We have a lot of these blue claw crabs here and we also eat them. I kept this one from a tiny baby and in 2 years it grew to this size, and these eat fish and everything else they could catch.

 

[Dom]

I had a brown rock crab that I placed in a tank years ago. He was fun to watch; it moved around the tank quite easily.

But its behavior made it easy for me to see how it could dominate the tank.

To begin, it move across my corals with a reckless abandon; remember, crabs don't care about the coral. I also found him to be very strong, routinely toppling rock work while scavenging for food.

But most startling was how it responded to frozen food during feeding. It would quickly climb to the highest point on the rock work, get both its claws high in the water column and and pick off the bring shrimp as quickly as it would come by. He definitely got the bulk of the feeding.

I could see this behavior causing a food shortage for everything else in the tank.

Ultimately, I netted him and took him back to the beach.