Horseshoe crab Help

They grow VERY slowly. As long as you have a place for her ready when she gets to big (the aquarium, your LFS, someone with a giant tank, Florida, etc) than you should be fine. Be sure to feed her daily, they're pigs.

That's the extent of my knowledge on keeping them. I do know from when my mom lived in Miami as a kid that they are everywhere in the mangroves in the secluded parts of the miami area, so putting a healthy crab into the wild if it gets large is not a far fetched idea. It would need to be really healthy, and you'd of course need to have access to a habitat suitable for them, and would probably need to contact the local wildlife service to see if it's even legal.

My .02

 

Here is my experience with horseshoe crabs. I was driving on the highway one time and I saw a horseshoe crab in the middle of the road. I stopped to see if it was still alive and amazingly it was. So I picked it up and was loading it up into the car to take to the beach when this woman ran up to me out of nowhere asking if the horseshoe crab was ok. I talked with her and it turned out that there was a medical research facility nearby that was taking samples of the horseshoe crabs blood and it somehow escaped. I gave her a ride back to the facility and once the horseshoe crab was back in water she told me about how unique and valuable the blood of horseshoe crabs is and how important they are not only to the environment but to medical research. After reading further into horseshoe crabs I don't think that this animal is for any hobbyist. I know this probably has nothing to do with your post but I just don't like to see horseshoe crabs in home aquariums. Just my 2cents

 

i remember watching shows about there blood being important.

how did it get out? i don't picture a horseshoe crab as a particularly fast land animal. lol

 

If you can keep her alive for 9 years - horse shoe crabs are idiots, it will do doubt do somethingbefore then that will inadvertently kill it.
They are cool tho

 

I used to go to the Maryland shore years ago, and the beach was covered with them. If it were me I would take it back to the lfs, before my heart was broken. If there isn't a guarantee that someone will take him when he is too big for your tank, I can't imagine how horrible it would be for you.

 

Thanks for all the info guys, we are definitely going to keep her and just pray that everything works out.

 

They are tough to keep but they are very cool. they are not great for reef aquariums, but they are still possible. In the wild they are used for both medical and comercial fish bait. they are drastically overharvested and their dropping numbers means less eggs for migrating shorebirds on the atlantic coast (specifically deleware). The Red Knot is a very suseptable bird that has dropped in numbers because of horseshore crab harvesting. While their blood is very usefull, we need to be responsible in the way we harvest and return the crabs to the wild as well as place restrictions on how many you can take for fishing purposes as there are none in most places.