Stone Crab

My supplier gave me this stone crab the other day. This thing is huge. I have him in a tank by himself. I actually think it's a female. It had a bunch of eggs a couple weeks ago. So I'm guessing that they were either unfertilized or there are thousans of baby stone carbs in his/her original tank.
This is him/her by himself

W/my hand for size comparason

and with a marker for size comparison.

I haven't measured it yet but as an estimate, I'll say that she's 8" across and 6" front to back. And that's not even including the legs.

 

As being a cajun that looks like some good eatin. Nice looking crab.

 

Nice crab

 

Nice man. I wanted to get myself a massive stone crab before, I got a mantis shrimp instead. You can tell the sex of crabs very easily if you can see the bottom.

 

little old bay seasoning and nut cracker.. lol

 

What size tank are you keeping this thing in? What are you feeding it? Would you post a video of it feeding? Crabs are freaking wild during feeding.

Also don't worry about the crab eggs. Even if they were fertilized baby crabs spend a long time in the plankton stage, and would not survive in an aquarium without a lot of effort.

 

sweet thatd make great mantis food

 

my hand and the marker doesn't do much justice to him since it is so far above him. He's bigger than my hand. I'll try to lift it over and take a pic to figure out the sex. I feed him bait fish / silver sides. He doesn't seem to like shrimp much.
He's in a 45 gal long tank 6'x1'x1'

Every pic I look up on google I see these guys in plates w/ cutlery lol;D

 

Nice crab. I used to work on an offshore & inshore lobster boats when I was younger. Just like lobster, these guys like colder water like under 50 F. Here's a nice PDF file on Stone Crabs from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, it very detailed including feeding, temp, salinity, etc..

They love herring or most oily fish. Try a little canned tuna, it should go crazy for it.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CBkQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nwrc.usgs.gov%2Fwdb%2Fpub%2Fspecies_profiles%2F82_11-021.pdf&ei=rfxGTPXQCcX_lget7-TsAw&usg=AFQjCNGIG9yFyiMZ9SIq35BVHxX7veXhqg

 

In this case it would be more of a death match than a feeding. A crab that size would put up a fight against an O. scyllarus. If it managed to get one claw on the mantis the game would be over.

If I were a betting man, and I am, I would bet if you put Siddique's crab and a large peacock in the same tank, they would both end up suffering bad wounds and die. Waste of two good crustaceans IMO. I always make my "feedings" lopsided. ;D