Marine Shore Crabs

[benji787]

are these a viable source of food for a puffer (humpback)?

i have access to a neverending supply so if it okay, should i grab bite sized or would my puffer enjoy bigger ones?

ty

[Wipeout]

Interested to know this also, living on the coast I have access to an endless supply of crabs.
I'm guessing the risk of introducing something nasty would be the main concern.
As I’ve only got a F8 my idea would be to freeze the legs and use those, hopefully this would kill off anything nasty.
The rest I’ll use as fishing bait

[DMD123]

I feed shore crabs to my Hairy and Arrowhead all the time. I do pull off the claws so my fish dont get damaged. Since the crabs are saltwater and the fish are freshwater I dont worry too much about any nasty stuff getting into the tank. I would be more concerned if they were going into brackish or salt for sure.

There is such a thing as too large of a crab with shells being just too much for the puffer to crack. I look for ones that they can easily crunch in half, so more bite sized seems to work good. My puffers get so excited going after the crabs that I feel it is good for them mentally too.

A downside is the little ‘parts’ left over. The legs and shell pieces are a pain to gravel vac especially if you have sand substrate. Even with gravel there is also the parts getting stuck in the tubing oof the gravel vac. Still worth it for the puffers sake.