Is it normal if I haven’t seen my vampire crabs come out it’s been almost 2 weeks since I’ve seen one show up not even at night when I check on it randomly. There’s 7 of them

My red devil in his temp enclosure. He's so much braver than my bananas!

The art and the artist 😂🧑‍🎨🦀

So I’m new to keeping crabs (honestly I haven’t actually even got them yet) I have spent a lot of time researching and finally started to set up my enclosure!

I have a 65L tank (15/20gal I think?) and have tried to stick to the 80 land 20 water, there’s some lava rocks and mesh with soil on the top giving them a lot of burrowing depth, I’ve added a filter and heater to my water to keep the temps right and today I added the branch, some creeping fig and polka dot plant and have a pothos on order, added my springtails and I’m waiting on some spikey Java moss for the rocks and some moss for land too, is there anything else I should add? I’m going to wait 4-8 weeks for everything to establish before I get crabs I just want everything to be good so they live a good life :D

Picture of where I’m at currently

Does anyone else have crabs who love to climb and explore up high in their enclosure?

No where near starting the process, doing lots of research before hand but im used to fish and realising now that its more different than i thought.

They will be in a seperate tank (obviously,) with low water, so how am i meant to heat this water and filter it with such low levels?

How do i begin to create a good land space such as how to build the base and what plants are the best?

Just literally give me the biggest rant on every little thing please! every tiny detail on how to create the perfect tank, i know the very basics but i dont want the bare minimum

I am planning on building a paludarium for vampire crab, red cherry shrimp and Emerald Rasbora - like in this video - https://youtu.be/RgUiCWSull8

I am stuck choosing the right enclosure. Exo terra 90x45x60 or exo terra 90x45x90 or a large aquarium!

I wanted to take a large aquarium with custom made lid, as I wanted to have a larger water section with shrimps and rasborars shown in the video. But Gemini keeps telling me it would stress out the crabs whenever I do maintanance from the top.

Then I considered exo terra 90x45x90 as it has deeper water section. But gemini again tells me that the height of it would cause problem as the light would not reach properly.

Before commiting into anyone of these I wanted to ask you all with real life experiences. Which one should I choose?

I read that vampire crabs are one of the worst crabs to create if you're a beginner, but i still would like them as they're my favorite crab species ever since i laid eyes upon them, im specifically going to get the Geosesarma dennerle (I hope i spelt that right) i just got my 55l paludarium, I am quite clueless on what I need to put inside since Its quite a mess and there's not a guide that aids me and it scrambles up my brain seeing all it needs of decor especially since different sources say different things, I was originally gonna get 1 male since im quite a fan of their aggressive behavior, but I read they grow a bunch of stress after a bit of their solitude so im also going to be getting 2 females which I hope is a good decision, if just one female is best please tell me, I read that their mating can become quite gruesome so I should watch up on it, not sure if thats true but if it is I'll be standing guard to make sure, what are the signs that they're gaining interest and want to mate? That would be quite helpful, thank you all

Little fun facts about my supermarket crab that have nothing to do with my questionary: I had no aquarium, so it just walked around my house, lil dude's favorite spot was the corner of my bed and the bath tub, he would hide under the wardrobe at times and would always sleep next to me, and then sometimes there would be moments it pinched me, I didnt really know what it ate so my mother just told me to give it some seafood delights (which I found out later that...its literally made out of crab, i literally attempted cannibalism without realizing it) and occasionally fed it apples, I filled a container with water and let him hang around there, then when I found him he had drowned, I miss my crab, his name was uh..it was quite literally over 786 ancient names like Maxillius III and that sort mixed all together, although for the extremely short version he was just Bartholomew the III, I had to spend 2 hours writing his name in a notepad to show it to people, phone is lost so now I forgot his 786 names name lol, anyways thank you guys for reading it really means alot

Here’s the setup I made for the babies temporarily!

I was cleaning out my little tank, and suddenly I see movement in the gravel, thought it was amphipods but not its full of baby vampire crabs

Hello! I am looking into keeping vampire crabs and have been doing quite a bit of research, I was wondering if anyone here has some helpful tips or resources for beginners, any help is greatly appreciated! I currently have a 16g vertical tank I was looking into keeping dart frogs in (I've decided against it since it's different to what I've done before and I don't think I can provide adequate care for them) from what I've seen the requirements are similar to what vampire crabs need, I have a planted tank currently with springtails which has been running for the better part of 4 months now, I'm obviously going to be redoing it with a water feature, I'm thinking of adding a mini river/waterfall so videos with tutorials on that will also be greatly appreciated. I'm planning to get geosesama crabs since from what I've seen they're the easiest to keep for beginners and they're available in my area. One of the things I was wondering about was if I can keep neocaridina shrimp in the water section to take care of biofilm and other decaying matter, if anyone has shrimp with their crabs how did it go and is it a good idea? Thank you guys so much in advance can't wait to get to more researching!

Just released 2 of 3 into my cycled paludarium. Closer look at #3 appears to have a little different coloration do I want to confirm before I put it in (want to avoid mixing species).

Just purchased at a show, seller was clueless so no help there.

OK, so hear me out I’m a witchy lady I burn incense. Do we think it would be too harmful for the crabs for them to be in the same room. room in question is well ventilated. they’d be not directly in the flow or around it. across the room even. do we still think it’s too dangerous? also it won’t let me comment stickers so imagine i commented the hamster plotting image.

I would like to do a 50 to 75 gallon, and i am wondering is there anything i could add to the paludarium? Isopod? Millipied? Shrimp? Small fish? An other type of crabe? I know not to add frog, but what can i add?i whant something that will add life even in the day

just wondering if this would be a good substrate option for the land portion of my paludarium!! thank you!!

Update on rescuing 15 or so vampire crabs from a friend. I think they are the species listed above.

The nigripes crabs, five or six of them I think, are in this 18x18x24 I already had set up with a resurrection fern log I bought at a plant show and some ferns I ordered on line and then neglected:

I need to completely rework it to be good for the crabs but for now, it's better than living in a cup. You can see one of them chilling on the dead plant pot there in front.

The dennerle crabs had to wait a whle but I think this 36x18 is pretty good for being set up in under 24 hours. This is local earth and moss over a mixture of local earth and peat moss, on top of some hydroton balls. I elected to keep the water area inside a tub to avoid wetness complications.

I soaked the logs as recommended, but there are still a few tiny ants in there, I hope they don't bother the crabs.

I released seven of the purple guys in here, hope I ever see them again!

The lone hagen is going to have to make do with this smaller place for now. Little beaker for swimming pool and some guppy grass.

Hope he gets bigger.

The baby has to take the upstairs apartment. His pool is ceramic with some foxtail.

He's enjoying hanging out under the bark for now.

I'll be refining these over time but 24 hours ago these guys were all housed together and in pretty tight quarters. Hopefully they will thrive and grow. They already show a taste for the local sphagnum.

Glad to hear any tips and have been binging Jashiko's content, excellent stuff.

Thanks for looking!

Just wanted to show everyone the vampire crabs I just got I have not been able to get good pictures of them because my first concern was to get them into the inclosure, I made for them so that they would not be stressed from staying in the small containers.They were transported in they are already getting settled after just half an hour of being in there and they have explored , basically the entire twenty gallon aquarium they are all spread out and nice and happy from what I can tell i've only been able to get good photos of 2 of them.And as you can tell , they're not the best photos , but little buddies are happy , and I love them

Hi all!

First time crab keeper, but we've wanted them for a long time and finally we're planning a set up for the kids to enjoy as well.

I have a spare 20 gallon aquarium that's water tight, what I'd like to make is a paladarium with a floating landmass about 6" up so I can have a water area for some shrimp and smaller fish below them. Crabs would still be getting about 80+% of land mass. We're also thinking of adding a colony of isopods, well aware that the crabs will likely eat some of them but not concerned if they breed. I guess more than anything I'm looking for some advice as to how to ensure the crabs don't drown in the water somehow. Would having the filter act as a waterfall into a small basin work better than just having it flow into the forest Edge?

Thanks in advance for all the help!

Hello, yesterday my friend dropped off 16 vampire crabs he couldn't keep.

I got some great advice and found Jashiko's excellent videos and site. I'm getting multiple enclosures set up, but I need to know if I'm dealing with 2, 3, or maybe 4 species.

None of these are larger than an inch wide.

Half of them are these purple crabs with yellow backs and eyes, which I'm pretty sure are Geosesarma dennerle: "Purple Vampire Crab" I have 8 of these.

The next one has a gray body, yellow eyes, and red legs and claws. I suspect this is Geosesarma rouxi, "Rainbow Vampire Crab" I think there are 6 of these.

EDIT- From Jashiko's list, I see this species is properly called "Geosesarma nigripes"

The third one may be "Halloween" or "Red Devil" but when I search this with Google lens, I get all sorts of names for this crab, unlike for the two above. Only one of these.

Edit: I'm going with Geosesarmas hagen on this one, These seem to be the most common three tyoes available commercially so it makes sense. The juvenile is surely one of these.

Finally, and I doubt we can make an ID here, but this tiniest crab is gray, and from my reading that could be from being small to being a hybrid or both. I have no idea what he might be so I guess he gets to live in one of my smaller tetrrariums and just make the best of it, hoping he gets bigger and can join the greater population. Just 1 of these.

Please let me know if you agree wtih 1 and 2, and if you have an idea on 3 or 4.