Hello Waffle,
Thanks for all the Questions, Firstly they DO NOT have a larval stage at any point of their life cycle, once females are berried they take between 3-5 weeks until the baby crabs hatch and are released, they are fully formed miniature adult crabs (about 1mm), I collected them with a freshwater ecologist in a stream in Melbourne (I will not be specific as I do not want this area to be over harvested) I collected only 10 individuals (2 males 8 females), as far as water parameters go they are reasonable hardy and accept a wide ranges of conditions ( they have to be expendable as they are an estuarine species, where the pH and salinity changes extremely quickly), mine are kept at a pH of 7-7.5, with water changes done weekly of 25%, the tank has sponge filters (I use sponge filters as they are completely shrimp and crab safe, compared to internal motorised sponge filters and hang on the back filters), they easily breed in the same environment that they are kept in, from what I have witness like shrimp they can only breed when a female sheds her shell, there should be an extremely high ratio of females to males as males will continually harass female crabs (that have just shedded) other wise the males can kill females, other wise males and females get on perfectly fine, the tank (cold water) has a large amount of native fissidens, driftwood, sand substrate and porous rocks, baby crabs should be fine if kept in the colony environment however as they need to compete with food with adult crabs you may only get 50% survival rate to adulthood, I overcome this issue by housing females (that are berried) in my 5 segmented tank this mean when the female releases the babies I simply take the female out and put back into the main crab tank, the babies are then grown on until the are about .5cm and added to the main colony tank, I keep mine in a species only aquarium, I have some with cherries and the crabs are quite timid of the shrimp even the HUGE 2cm males XD, I did have Amarinus Laevis however I did find the quite regularly predated on my shrimp , and also because of they complicated life cycle,
all in all, easy to care for, easy to feed, just keep with non aggressive fish (they can be acclimatised to tropical), fully formed babies, extremely shrimp safe.
Regards,
Rare Aqua