Mr. Crabbs is the whole reasoning behind buying my 20g aquarium in the first place and making it brackish. Poor little guy has been through a lot. I bought him and a friend at the LFS a couple weeks ago and stuck him in my 10g freshwater aquarium because that's how they had him. I thought it odd that he would be perfectly fine in freshwater so I did a little research on the internet. Come to find out lots of people and Pet Stores make this same mistake. They can survive in freshwater but not for long, they really need brackish in order to survive for longer than a week. They also need access to the surface every so often. So one morning when I found him and his friend stiff on the bottom of my tank I knew it was too late. As I was lifting them out with my net I noticed his little leg just barely moving. So I went and got one of my corningware bake dishes, put some aquarium water in it, put a rock in there for hiding and climbing to the surface and waited. I didn't have the money yet for a new aquarium and so the best thing I could do for him is to go get marine salt, add a little bit and wait. The next couple days were touch and go, he seemed to be getting stronger though. Instead of barely moving and being stiff he started to gain his composure back. Unfortunatly, due to the stress he lost both of his claws (good thing he will gain these back during his next molt). Eventually after a week he started to move fairly fast and eat pretty good so I knew it was time to invest in his future. I bought a 20g tank with a good filtration system off craigslist for $40 and set it up as a brackish aquarium complete with white sand for burrowing and lava rocks for hiding. A crabby paradise! Mr. Crabbs is doing just fine, even after introducing two more crabs as tank mates. Despite not having claws which would normally make him defenseless, he is still head crab. Just this morning I saw him waving his little legs and running off the fiddler crab out of his main hiding spot. Mr. Crabbs is BACK and feeling good :headbang2:
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