Lemon Vampire Crab

The Lemon Vampire Crab, also sold as the yellow vampire crab, is a good buy if you keep, or are ready to build, a humid, sealed paludarium with real land and a water section the crab can fully enter. It won’t live in an ordinary aquarium, and it doesn’t belong in a fully flooded shrimp tank.

It’s a small Geosesarma crab with a bright yellow shell and deep purple claws and legs. Trade names in this genus are unreliable, and the same name can cover different crabs, so we don’t attach a species name to the Lemon line. Everything in our catalog is bred or propagated in our own tanks rather than collected from the wild, and that includes these crabs.

Is your paludarium ready for Lemon vampire crabs?

Have the enclosure running and humid before you order. Go through this list first:

• A land section with moist substrate, moss and enough hides that every crab can get out of sight at once.
• A water section a crab can climb into, fully enter and climb out of from any point.
• A lid that closes with no gaps, including around cables, tubing and filter intakes.
• Humidity you can hold high with the lid closed, damp moss and regular misting.
• A heater or a room that keeps the enclosure near 78°F (26°C).
• Water that already tests at 0 ammonia and 0 nitrite.

What temperature and humidity does a Lemon vampire crab need?

Keep the enclosure at about 78°F (26°C), within 72-85°F (22-29°C), and keep the air humid. Dry air is the common failure with these crabs, so keep the lid closed, the moss damp and the misting regular.

Plan for a short life. Species profiles written by experienced crab specialists put the maximum at about two years for three related Geosesarma, and that figure comes from those profiles, not from crabs aged in a study.

Can Lemon vampire crabs live with shrimp or other crabs?

Neocaridina shrimp are the tank mates we’d pick for the water section, and we’d keep Lemon crabs as the only crab line in the enclosure. 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.

The shrimp still need their own water. Neocaridina are kept at 65-78°F (18-26°C), so a shared enclosure runs at 72-78°F (22-26°C), the part of the range that suits both. We keep only small, peaceful fish with our crabs. An aggressive fish can eat a crab, or harass one that has come down into the water to molt, and a molt that is disturbed can fail.

Two crabs that look alike aren’t necessarily the same species, which is why we wouldn’t put a second vampire crab line in with them. If your crabs do breed, move the crablets out to grow up, because adults eat the young ones they find.

What should you feed Lemon vampire crabs?

Give small portions of a varied diet and lift anything left over the next day, before it spoils in the damp air. In the wild, described vampire crab species eat small insects and plant detritus. At home, the usual routine is a small mix of meaty foods and plant matter.

Ordering Lemon vampire crabs from Vietnam

Choose Male or Female on this page before you order. We don’t promise breeding, clutch size or the number of young from any order. If you’d like to compare looks first, our other vampire crab lines sit side by side, but plan one enclosure per line.

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

On delivery day, film one uncut unboxing video from the sealed box. Under our live arrival guarantee, 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. Then follow the instructions packed with your order, keep the lights low, skip feeding for the first day and let the crabs walk into cover on their own.