Halloween Vampire Crab

Buy a Halloween vampire crab only if you’re ready to run a lidded, humid paludarium that’s mostly land, with a water section the crab can climb into and fully enter. It’s a small semi-terrestrial crab, a Geosesarma species, and it won’t live in an ordinary aquarium. If that sounds like more setup than you want, we’d start with a shrimp tank instead.

The line is named for its colors: an orange shell over dark legs and purple claws. Shades vary between crabs, so we don’t promise the exact look of the one you receive. Everything in our catalog is bred or propagated in our own tanks rather than collected from the wild. You choose Male or Female on this page, and we don’t promise that any pair or group will breed.

Is your paludarium ready for a Halloween vampire crab?

It’s ready when every item below is true before the crabs arrive. Adults are small, about 10-15 mm across the shell in the described vampire crab species, so a small gap or loose lid is all it takes to lose one.

• A lid that closes tight, with no gap a small crab could squeeze through.
• Most of the floor is land: moist substrate, moss and enough hides that every crab can get out of sight.
• A water section every crab can walk into, fully enter and climb back out of easily.
• Air that stays humid, held up by the closed lid, the moist substrate and moss, and regular misting.
• If shrimp or fish will share the water, that water is already cycled: ammonia 0 and nitrite 0.

Plan for a short-lived pet, too. About two years at most is the longest lifespan listed for related vampire crab species, a figure from experienced carcinologists’ species profiles, not from crabs aged in a study. If you’re building from scratch, the layout and climate in our vampire crab care guide are the place to start.

Confirming your own import rules is part of ordering. We cannot tell you that live freshwater invertebrates are legal to import where you live.

Which tank mates can share the water with Halloween vampire crabs?

Neocaridina shrimp are the easiest choice for the water section, and small, peaceful fish can work too. Large, aggressive or bottom-hunting fish don’t belong there, because they can eat a crab or disturb one that has come down to molt.

At Shrimp Aquatics, we keep Neocaridina shrimp in the water section of our vampire crab paludariums. They breed there, and the young grow up normally; the crabs rarely manage to catch them.

Keep the water inside the shrimp’s own range, never the crab’s. With Neocaridina in the paludarium, that means holding it at 72-78°F (22-26°C), where both animals’ temperatures meet. No tank mate is guaranteed safe, so watch the first weeks closely. We’d also keep Halloween vampire crabs as their own group and not mix them with other vampire crab lines: trade names in this genus are unreliable, and a mixed tank leaves you guessing which crab is which. If you’d like a different look, compare our other vampire crab lines before you order.

What should you feed a Halloween vampire crab?

Offer small, varied meals built around small insects, with a little plant matter on the side. In the wild, the described vampire crab species eat small insects at least in part, and probably midge larvae and plant detritus as well. Put food on the land section where the crabs can reach it, and the usual rule is to lift anything uneaten by the next day so it doesn’t spoil in the humid air.

What to do when your Halloween vampire crabs arrive

Follow the instructions that come with your order, and have the paludarium running and settled before the box lands. A safe default is to keep the lights low, leave the crabs alone to find their hides, and skip feeding on arrival day.

Film the unboxing in one uncut take. Livestock that arrives dead is replaced free of charge, counted from the first animal, when you report it within 2 hours of the carrier’s delivery time with an uncut unboxing video. The full terms are in our live arrival guarantee.