Horseshoe Crabs

We keep quite a few horseshoe crabs in our sumps, to stir up the sand beds.

They do a great job of this, acting like little bulldozers, plowing up the top layer.

They are looking for invertebrates to eat, but we feed ours granular food and they have grown rapidly.

This one at left started out about 3/4" wide 3 or 4 years ago, and has molted many times.

They really are interesting creatures to watch. You are looking at a creature that is unchanged

since they evolved millions of years ago.

The one drawback we have noticed with horseshoe crabs is some of them dont survive when we first get them. I dont know if they come in stressed, but the new ones have a fairly high mortality rate.

But once established, they seem to live for a long time.

Remember they molt just like snakes. Their shell cant stretch, so they will disappear under the sand for a few days to shed their shell and let their new one harden. Its best not to disturb them when the do this. Their shell is easily damaged.

Just make sure you give them a good sand bed to dig into. They will stay there sometimes for several days when they are stressed. I think under the sand is where they are most comfortable.

But if you dig around looking for them, just make sure that their sharp tail doesn't stick you!

They are very cool.