Crab Breeding

Crab breeding is a lucrative business, I was told. Now, it doesn’t take a math nerd to tell you that this is a venture worth looking into. It’s increasingly rare that the crabs you eat come from the wild. Brown crabs in particular are sensitive to changes in water salinity. Storms that wash in too much freshwater or sea water will affect the population. If mangrove swamps go the way scientists say they will, brown crabs may one day have to be 100% farm-raised.


The crabs are nurtured, in 2.5ft x 12ft (0.7m x 3.6m) rectangular containers, a multi-tiered miniature aquatic apartment that holds 120 crabs. Each crab has its own pot because of the species’ cannibalistic nature. This is the crab’s home for 70 days, until it reaches a market size of 500gm. It doesn’t take up too much space, and you could picture a set installed in your yard, just so you could have the multi-legged creatures for dinners regularly. It’s a crab-eat-crab world out there in the depths of a pond, so breeding in tanks is preferable as this helps to control the mortality rate. If crabs don’t get enough to eat, they feed on each other or even themselves. Like all arthropods, crabs must shed their shell to grow. When a crab is armour-less, this is when it is most vulnerable to attacks by other crabs. That’s a lot of drama going on in the crab realm.

Crabs reared in ponds have only a 30% survival rate. In tanks, there’s a 80%-95% chance of surviving. Out of 120 young crabs raised per tank, roughly 112 will see the insides of a shipment box. Breeding crabs is not a tough business to manage, even for a stay-at-home mum. The key is to maintain the cleanliness of the water. The crabs feed once a day on a diet of chopped fish. Feeding is done at night because crabs are nocturnal creatures. Every morning, you’d have to remove the remains of the previous night’s dinner and wash the filter bags. This is good because there are no environmental contaminants, or mercury. There’s little waste, and the system is drought-proof as water is continually recycled.

You can spot a good crab just by looking at its stomach, the heavy ones have more meat. The one thing you don’t want to do is overcook this mighty tasty creature. Once a crab dies, the meat gets mushy. If you’ve ever eaten a crab and found that the meat was mushy, it means it died before hitting the pot. The most intense, sweet flavour in a crab, is found in the fat layer beneath its shell.

Tank-raised crab are held in higher esteem at hotels and restaurants because when reared in pristine water, the flavour is clean and sweet. A venture like this has the potential to provide employment for people and could bring sustainable long-term economic benefits for the community.

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