Heterothelphusa fatum

[Shaihulud]

Hello, bought one male cheap at $1 in c328 for a fully aquatic 2ft tank. I remember one of the bother selling a pair of it male and female, unfortunately the female pictures did not load. I am aware that most of the ones sold are males from the underside abdominal flap, but so many crabs with big claws, they pinch me so until I bleed! I was wondering if they exhibit sexual dimorphism like the fiddlers (They all seems to have this big claw) so females would have both claws of roughly equal size. Anyone with any experience on this interesting crustacean please give a comment. I also don't want to stress those crabs by turning them too much.

[fisherw]

According to lucasjiang when I requested for an ID, the females have equal sized claws unlike the males. See:

http://www.aquaticquotient.com/forum...highlight=crab

[lucasjiang]

Hi, i was the brother selling the ppair of crabs. the females crabs are very(x100) rare, and extremely hard to get. this exporters are clever, they export only the males, so that we cannot breed the crabs, so it is close to imppossible to get a pair. you must observe all the the crabs and spot the very (x100) rare female that will appear in some shipments.

[Shaihulud]

Then no females crab was observed then. The male crab which I purchased is doing fine , it is housed in my snail breeding tank. It enjoys sinking carnivore pellet, so far it ignored everything else. Quite an active crab and not afraid of me watching or my hand. I wonder if it requires a land area, I would think a cheap and attractive crab like this, more people would have more experience.

[BEASTIEPENDENT]

Hi there

Luckily we got three females lately They have unequal scissors either but the difference is much smaller than in the males.



More pictures here: http://www.panzerwelten.de/v/Heterot...thelphusidae1/

[lucasjiang]

Beastie, you are lucky!!! and three at that!!!

[BEASTIEPENDENT]

Yeah, one we gave to a friend who searched desperately

[lucasjiang]

and to think that i have been searching through petshops for at least 1/2 a year now...

[Shaihulud]

This is great luck! But I found one female at Aquastar and I subsequently bought it an hour ago I was quite weary (after my afternoon run) when I saw that they were selling heterothelphusa, I immediately try and spot for one that has almost equal sized claw. All males except for one female, I got a transparent plastic dish to confirm.

[BEASTIEPENDENT]

Last friday we found another female in our usual pet shop… Strange, but we took her with us of course.

[Shaihulud]

My female died recently reasons unknown. Male is still kicking around and active. I have placed 2 pikehead with him, they have been doing well for a week.

[lucasjiang]

seems like the exporters are getting more and more careless? or maybe they dont really care whether they export out the males or females.

[ksc133]

hi guys

this is an old thread.
don't mind if i ask if Heterothelphus fatum is a fully aquatic freshwater crab?
how big do they grow?

thanks

[Shaihulud]

Sorry for the late reply. They are to my knowledge a fully aquatic species and their carapace around 5-6cm across.