The pet market is known as the pepper crab, the scientific name tan mud crab. 为沙蟹科泥蟹属，在我国大陆主要分布在江苏、山东、渤海湾及辽东半岛等地。
Tan's mud crab
The crab is a soda crab , ( soda : semi-seawater , salinity between seawater and freshwater ) and is an open small egg crab , and the crab seedlings have a floating period of 2 to 3 weeks in a seawater or soda environment. It then undergoes metamorphosis and transforms into a crab type for freshwater growth. It is almost impossible to provide floating bait in artificial environments. Therefore, it is extremely difficult to reproduce in artificial environments. The picture below is of the pelagic crab.
Pelagic crabs
Therefore, all the basic sales on the market are collected in the wild and there is no artificial breeding. (Unless you're rich enough to pack up a piece of land with an estuary)
Pepper crabs eat a small amount of omnivorous, and their food is tender grass, insects, other animal carcasses, spirulina powder, shrimp of the harvest, and moss. If you are a friend who plays with grass tanks, you basically buy a pepper crab for algae removal or embellishment, but in fact, the ability of a pepper crab to remove algae is really not as good as three black shell shrimp. Because of the relationship between food and body size, pepper crabs are basically not a threat to the fish and shrimp in the tank. However, the disposal of fish and shrimp carcasses at the bottom is quite efficient.
Distinguish the difference between pepper crabs and other similar crabs: mainly depend on whether there is red or brown in the crab claws. There are often examples of other hairy crabs in the market, which can pose a threat to other fish and shrimp in the tank. The so-called mini pepper crab on the market (the smaller red pincer sold in the flower and bird market is actually the "Taiwan mud crab") is a subspecies of mud crab.
If you want to raise a good pepper crab, you must first understand one thing! Pepper crab is not a deep water crab! Important thing to say three times: pepper crab is not deep water crab! Pepper crab is not a deep water crab! Pepper crab is not a deep water crab!
Some lack of morality stores say that they can be deep water, do not believe it! Even scolding him directly. The wild environment of pepper crabs is mud or rocky bottoms, so if you want to raise pepper crabs, you must at least make sunken wood or other facilities that can probe the water surface for the pepper crab to breathe. A friend of mine was a moss planted on a rock that was exposed to the water.
For the characteristics of its soda crab, we can add a little sea salt to the water to create a suitable environment, if you want to polyculture with freshwater fish, you can not add more than three thousandths of salt, that is, 1 liter of water plus up to 3g of salt (suitable for a liter of water 1.5g of salt calculation, when adding salt to use the scale to accurately calculate)
Pepper crabs are small and easily attacked by other carnivorous fish, so if you want to raise pepper crabs, do not polyculture with other crab-eating fish.
Because of the mixed diet, the demand for food for pepper crab is not too high, but if you pursue delicacy, you can buy shrimp eggs, green algae powder or grass worms.
The temperature is controlled between 12-31 degrees, and 25 degrees is the best. Pepper crab can withstand a minimum of 3 degrees Celsius.
Pepper crab does not like light, it is best to set the mud field in the shade of the backlight.
Basically, that's all I know about pepper crabs.