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Blue crab question


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#1 Irate Mormon

Irate Mormon
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  • Crooked Creek, Mississippi

Posted 16 January 2015 - 04:32 PM

OK then. I did a bit of collecting near the coast, in not quite freshwater. I netted some juvenile blue crabs, being surprised to find them in such low salinity.

I have kept them in (not quite) freshwater for a few months, but the tank is barren of decor. The question then, O' collective wisdom of the forum, is whether vegetation would be safe with them?

-The member currently known as Irate Mormon


#2 fundulus

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Posted 16 January 2015 - 04:39 PM

Blue crabs are serious shredders, especially in a restricted environment. But it could be interesting to watch.
Bruce Stallsmith, Huntsville, Alabama, US of A

#3 Irate Mormon

Irate Mormon
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  • Crooked Creek, Mississippi

Posted 16 January 2015 - 08:15 PM

Mmm. I suspected as much.

-The member currently known as Irate Mormon


#4 littlen

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  • Washington, D.C.

Posted 17 January 2015 - 09:03 AM

They will eat a lot more vegetation as juveniles, especially a lot of the green algae in the genus Ulva. And like rambunctious children they will gladly destroy what you seek to keep nice.

And they do quite well in low salinity. Even as they grow.
Nick L.

#5 mikez

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Posted 17 January 2015 - 12:43 PM

I don't know about their taste for vegetables but from observing them in the wild I can tell you they are efficient predators of free swimming fish.

Very cool to watch them creep under a thick school of silversides or menhaden and stand up on tip toes and snatch fish with their big claws.

They be mighty fine eatin' of course but almost extinct in the RI waters where we used to harvest bucket fulls back in the 70s.
Besides overharvest, I believe they have been displaced by invasive green crabs which are too small to be worth harvesting.
Mike Zaborowski
I don't know, maybe it was the roses.

#6 Moontanman

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Posted 17 January 2015 - 04:18 PM

they live in freshwater here where they have been trapped for various reasons, I've seen them 14" across their shell in freshwater. They are not even safe with each other....
Michael

Life is the poetry of the universe
Love is the poetry of life

#7 fundulus

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Posted 17 January 2015 - 06:29 PM

Lady crabs, a close relative of blues, were common in Nantucket Harbor and at least as aggressive when caught. We may see those at the 2016 Convention since they're found on the NH coast.
Bruce Stallsmith, Huntsville, Alabama, US of A

#8 mikez

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Posted 21 January 2015 - 09:01 AM

Lady crabs, or calicoes as we called them as kids are much more common than blues are in New England but still not seen in the numbers I remember as kids. Calicoes show up more in tide pools in rocky areas while the blues like open sand flats.

Most people only know calico crabs from the pretty carapace shell which is persistent and washes on shore to be picked up by shellers.

It should be understood I make these generalizations not as a crab expert, just a guy who fishes and snorkles a bit and notices stuff. In the 70s my dad had us kids collect blue crabs for him to eat but I have never collected them in decades nor seen enough to bother.
Further south, in Chesapeake region they are apparently still populous enough to support a commercial harvest.
One thing I don't know, do they have green crabs down there?
Mike Zaborowski
I don't know, maybe it was the roses.

#9 killier

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Posted 23 January 2015 - 08:18 PM

Charleston SC has a large Blue Crab fisheries. Haven't even heard of green crabs until now.
trust the killienut
-Robert Godzinski




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