Sulawesi fine spotted crab

Care at a glance

Overview

Expect the same habits as the panther crab, its larger cousin from the same lakes: a bottom dweller that hides in its cave by day and patrols at night, territorial with its own kind. Keep one, or a male with one or two females in a big, well structured tank, because males fight. It eats anything it can hold, so dwarf shrimp, snails, and fish that sleep on the bottom are food, while fast fish in the upper water are usually left alone. Feed sinking pellets, frozen bloodworm, blanched vegetables, and a little fish or shrimp meat, with cuttlebone in the tank for the molt.

In the wild

The Sulawesi fine spotted crab is a stream crab of central and southern Sulawesi, collected in the cold tributaries feeding Lake Towuti, small rivers running into Lake Matano, the Balambano and Larona rivers near Malili, and up to Lake Poso. It is fully aquatic and needs no land, just a tight lid, because it climbs. Set up a tank of at least 60 liters with sand, piles of rock with caves, and good flow and oxygen, and run it warm and hard like a Sulawesi shrimp tank at 24 to 29 C and pH 7.5 to 8.5. Clean water matters more than plants, which it will dig up anyway.

Good to know

Parathelphusa pallida is a freshwater crab in the family Gecarcinucidae, described by Schenkel in 1902 as a pale variety of Parathelphusa celebensis from the Kalaena tributaries and treated as a species in its own right by Bott in 1970 and by Chia and Ng in their 2006 revision of the Sulawesi crabs. The lectotype male is about 2.4 cm across, and the crabs sold in the trade run to around 4 cm, but no firm maximum is published. It belongs to a knot of seven look alike species told apart mostly by the male gonopods and the swelling of the carapace. Like other freshwater crabs it develops directly, releasing finished young instead of larvae. The IUCN lists it as Least Concern, with reports of declining numbers.

Common questions

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