Home » Horseshoe-Crab

what to do if my horseshoe crab is sick?

16 November 2008 Comments

floating on his side and hi es no moving much
is a salt water tank

Comments »

  • Coexisting said:

    that is funny. I didn’t think people kept horse shoe crabs.
    He is probably dead.
    Go get a new one.

  • Mars_Hill said:

    Is it in a saltwater tank?

    Edit:
    What are your current water parameters (Temperature, Salinity, pH, Ammonia, Nitrites, Nitrates)? Maybe one of these is out of whack. They prefer cooler temperatures and a large open bed of deep fine sand. I’ve read that they also need a lot of worms in their diet, as well as clams. Check out the second link below for more info.

    Regards

  • copperhead said:

    Just a suggestion beyond checking the water parameters - are you sure what you’re seeing is the crab? These molt their exoskeleton, just as do insects, shrimp, and crabs, so what you’re seeing may be the castoff of the old exoskeleton and your crab is hiding in the substrate/rocks until the new one hardens.

    Or your crab about to molt, and just finding a place to settle down while this happens.

    Make sure the crab is getting enough food - when I tried keeping them, I would always put a few sinking pellets directly in front of their shell so they could quickly cover it so the food wouldn’t be "stolen" by the fish or shrimp in the tank.

Leave your response!

Add your comment below, or trackback from your own site. You can also subscribe to these comments via RSS.

Be nice. Keep it clean. Stay on topic. No spam.

You can use these tags:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>

This is a Gravatar-enabled weblog. To get your own globally-recognized-avatar, please register at Gravatar.