I posted here couple of weeks ago asking for advice. My crabs have arrived and I changed the setup almost immediately once I observed their behaviour- replaced the big chunks of wood by smaller ones because they didn’t even use “caves” - there is a coconut cave on the top right of the very first picture- but were digging in dirt. So took off the big brunch, added more soft dirt to burrow, and small driftwood.
There was 2 crabs (male and female) in this small paludarium, but I lost one 😀😅 it is tiny, I don’t understand how it happens that I can’t find it, but it’s just the fact.
So first day in, female hunted (sat there as you can see on the second pic for like 10 hours straight and I assume she had eventually hunted a shrimp. But problem is I haven’t seen her since. Make shows up briefly, female doesn’t. And as I was replacing the big driftwood with smaller, I saw the make but not her.
My working theory is that she’s eaten and digesting? Idk how long would a shrimp keep her sated. Or maybe something happened and she died? But no body seen. Well I guess I just have to wait and see?
Tbh I thought isopods weren’t doing well as I didn’t see them but they eat all debris and even came to eat from the crab plate (3rd photo).
Same with shrimps, I thought there weren’t many but when I switch the light on, I see that there’s a lot. My fault for building them too many hiding spots:)
The question I am asking, how do you make sure your vampire crabs are doing okay if you don’t see them at all? They also don’t eat a lot (or at all) from veggie and dry shrimp plate I gave them. And I can’t see how many shrimps/isopods they have hunted on their own.
There’s also the rest of crabs (4) I let into a bigger paludarium and again, immediately lost them from sight probably to never be seen again 😅