Although we often refer to our shellfish systems as Lobster Tanks they are are also excellent at storing crabs and langoustine.

Crab have slightly different requirements to lobster.

They can make the seawater in the tank very mucky so we tend to have a larger mechanical filter.  They produce more physical waste so we ensure the sponge filter can handle this without getting blocked.  They also produce more ammonia so the biological filter is vital to turn this harmful toxin to nitrite then less harmful nitrate.  If you are storing larger quantities of crab then a de-gassing tower is also useful as this can remove the high levels of carbon dioxide from the water.

Most crabs have the claws nicked but this means they can only survive for days even in one of our systems.  Usually crabs are processed quickly and due to the lower value than lobsters we do sell less systems for crab than we do for lobsters which can be stored for months and have a much higher price per kilo.

Langoustine can also be stored in our Lobster Tanks.

They do very well if floated in baskets in our tanks or in our Lobster Pod storage system within customised fish boxes.  Survival depends on the quality of the prawns to begin with.  Creel caught prawns survive well and we have customers who store them in the same system as lobsters quite happily in either baskets or different trays.

You can keep multi-species in one of our traditional tank based systems.

We recommend keeping crab in the tank nearest to the filter.  The fresh, filtered seawater should go to the prawns and lobster before the crab so the mucky water is filtered before passing through. Each species should be kept either in separate tanks or with a partition in the tank.  Our multi award-winning Lobster Pod system can easily segregate species.  By putting lobsters in the top trays, langoustine in the lower trays and crab in the bottom they can all be stored together.  As long as the filter capacity can deal with the waste produced by the crab there is no problem.  The different shellfish all have slightly different optimum temperature ranges but if you keep the system running between 8-10 degrees they will all be happy.

For any more advice on storing multi-species of shellfish please call tel 01383 820685 and speak to our team.

Best Fishes,
Errin Todd

Sea-E-O