ok so i went to go check out the petstore to buy food and see what new things they have gotten in and saw these really cool crabs that had bright red carapaces. the lady said they also had ones that were purple as well but i didnt see these, they also had fiddler crabs in another tank. i have been looking for something cool to put in my empty 20g long and thought these might be the perfect addition. i know the fiddlers would need land and if the other crabs are indeed vampires then they would need land as well but is there anything else that these crabs could be? and i have never had any crabs like this so any other advice on care would be great. right now i have the tank set up as a full aquarium but would have no issue with draining it and pushing over the sand to create some land for them. also can all these different crabs be kept together or would they fight? and how many could i comfortably keep in a 30in long tank with about half of it as land or more if needed (how much water should they have?)
Freshwater crabs...might be vampires?
- Thread starter Sarah88
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Give us more of a description as they could be soapdish crabs...How big were they and what color were their pincers?
i dont think they were soapdish crabs aren't those pretty much a uniform tannish color?, i dont remember exactly what color their pincers were but they were quite small, like maybe .5 across their carapace and were pretty much a dark blackish/greyish color except for a really pretty bright red on their backs, im going back to the store tomorrow though so ill be able to give better description then, i just wanted to make sure to find out the best way to care for them because the store has them fully aquatic but then they have the poor fiddler crabs as fully aquatic too so i dont think they know what they are doing
a wile ago my lps had a tank with a bunch of crabs like you discribed and they guy there said they were "Halloween crabs"?
yeah i think i may go ahead and pick up a couple tomorrow, just sucks cus my camera was stolen so i cant take any pics right now to clear up what kind of crab they are, how do you post pics from a phone? i think the lady called the ones that were purplish, vampire crabs but she wasn't sure what the red ones were called and they didn't have a label on their tank yet, i know soapdish crabs have to be on their own but as long as they aren't soapdish crabs can i have several in the same tank as well as different species, like the red ones, purple vampire ones and fiddlers?
Yeah,they don't sound like soapdish crabs with those descriptions.I have two and they have an orange or reddish body with blue on the top surface and the have white pincers...The thing is,I've seen my crabs sold under three different names-Halloween,Patriot,and Soapdish but this vampire term is a new one to me and the ones you describe are very small compared to mine which are about the size of golfballs.
I've never kept fiddlers before but I have heard that most of the ones that are sold in stores are brackish which probably is'nt the best for other types of freshwater crabs...I started out with three soapdish crabs and everything was cool untill I bought this slightly smaller and undentified red crab.The red crab ended up killing one of my soapdish and the biggest one ended up tearing some of the legs off of the red crab...They seem to tolerate one another now but I mention all of this as an example for you to be careful when mixing different types.Sarah88;4558380; said:
ok so i went and picked up two of them today, my phone camera isn't taking that good of pictures but i will try again when they settle in a bit i didn't want to keep stressing them out trying to take pics. I got one of each kind that they were selling, i havent looked at their carapaces to tell gender yet, but one they called a vampire crab and im pretty sure thats what it is, its a nice dark purple color, with a light greyish patch on the back half of its body but the rest of its body is all the dark purple color. the other one they called a red devil crab, he has the same body shape but the top of his carapace is bright orange and his pincers are red with the rest of his body being a dark blackish/purplish color. he is a lot less shy than the vampire and so far he has stayed on the land area while the vampire crab has stayed in the water
and Gook, it has big red claws like that but the back of its body is bright orange, not brownish like the one in the photo
and Gook, it has big red claws like that but the back of its body is bright orange, not brownish like the one in the photo