Ever wanted to keep something entirely new that’s not a fish, shrimp, or snail? Then you may have heard of Thai micro crabs. They’re entirely aquatic, very shy. So are they worth it or not? Keep reading to find out.
when I got the Thai micro crabs, they are obviously very small brownish color. So other people say they come in several other colors, but mine were kind of a dull brown and their body is probably about 0.8 to one centimeter long, or like 0.3 to 0.4 inches.
They get scared they’ll actually hide their legs underneath their bodies so they look even smaller. They also have these small spindly, hairy legs, and can actually catch different particles of detritus or debris in the water. And then they’ll pick it off their legs to see if it’s edible. Weird, huh?
Water conditions and filter
Their temperature range is pretty wide from 72 to 82 degrees Fahrenheit. They don’t seem picky about pH or water hardness at all. And then otherwise their care and diet requirements seem very similar to dwarf shrimp.
The Thai micro crab tank had a very gentle flow using a sponge filter, but if you have a different kind of filter, consider getting a pre-filter sponge so they won’t accidentally get sucked up. Also, it was heavily planted with lots of cover because I hear they like to hide among the base of plants, among plant roots, or in floating plants along the top where a lot of debris catches on their roots.
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So problem number one with Thai micro crabs is, as you suspect, they are hard to find. I thought I would have fun looking for them, but I literally never saw them. They definitely won the prize for the shyest guys and the shy guy tank.
I think the most I ever saw them was when I had them in the fish bag. Oh, except for one time I found two of them grappling each other on the substrate. And that was like the highlight of my time.
Since they could be literally hiding anywhere, you might need to be a little careful when siphoning them. You don’t want to actually suck them out. Or if you’re uprooting leaves or removing floating plants, they could be hiding there. So just be a little careful and look at it first before you put them in the trash can.
What do Thai micro crabs eat?
You’ll often see people feeding them things like shrimp foods, like Bacter AE, shrimp pellets, smaller frozen foods, and other fish foods that are directed for animals.
Thai micro crabs are slow eaters, at least from what I can tell. And remember, the fish in this tank were all fairly shy themselves, timid, not extremely fast eaters.
But I feel like every time I fed the tank, all the food was gone and I never saw any crabs approach it. Now they are scavengers. So they should supposedly look for little food crumbs here and there, but given how slowly and carefully they move, I’m not sure if they got enough food.
So if I had to do this second time around, I would probably feed more Bacter AE powder food which would spread all over the tank and get caught in those little roots for the crabs to find whenever they want.
Tank mates
You’ll often hear that rule of, well, as long as something can’t fit into the mouth of another fish, then they should be safe together, right? You’ll often see people recommending as tank mates for Thai micro crabs, things like small creatures.
Ideal tank mates include:
- Dwarf shrimp
- Snails
- Pigment corydoras
- Micro Rasboras
- Otoinclus
However, even nano fish with really small mouths, I feel like can be curious about other things. And they may pick on them just to see what they are. And that could be potentially very stressful for the crabs.
Honestly, I have no idea what happened to them because I never saw them except for maybe one or two times, which you’ve seen footage over here. And then maybe five months after they got added to the aquarium, I saw a crab molt, but that was it.
Eventually, I tore down the Shy Guys Tank and moved all the animals I could find into another setup and there were no Thai micro crabs in there. So theory number one is that they got eaten by the peacock gudgeon. It was one of the biggest fish in the tank and I did see it one time get very curious about a Thai micro crab. Didn’t look like it was big enough to fit in, but it probably could have eaten a few legs, and where that goes.
Theory number two, that somebody suggested in the comments is that they escaped. They definitely could have climbed up to the top of that sponge filter, out the airline tubing and escaped. Because I had a lid, but there was definitely a crack big enough for the crabs to escape.
And it could have potentially have crawled into the carpet, dried up and gotten vacuumed up. Based on that experience, if I was going to keep them again, I would probably get a colony of them, put them in a five-gallon aquarium and make it species only, no other tank mates.
You would have a gentle filter. I would give them shrimp foods and they would have no other competition except among themselves. Having fish as tank mates seems to ensure that they’ll always be hiding.
They’re not going to get enough food or they’ll be bullied or eaten. I actually really miss looking for them in my aquarium and seeing their slow, careful crawling movements among all the plant’s leaves.
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