Buy a Purple Vampire Crab only if you keep, or are ready to build, a humid paludarium with a real land area and a water section the crab can climb into and fully enter. It’s a small semi-terrestrial crab, a Geosesarma species, so a planted aquarium filled to the lid is the wrong home for it. Everything in our catalog is bred or propagated in our own tanks rather than collected from the wild.
If you were hoping for a crab to add to a shrimp or fish aquarium, this one won’t suit you. If you’d enjoy a small land-and-water display that you can keep humid and escape-proof, it can.
What your Purple Vampire Crab paludarium needs before you order
Have the whole enclosure running before the box ships, because a new crab needs a humid place to hide on its first day. These are the conditions we’d set up for:
| Temperature | About 78°F (26°C), within about 72-85°F (22-29°C) |
|---|---|
| Humidity | High. A closed lid, moist substrate and moss, and misting keep it up; dry air is the most common failure |
| Land section | A real land area with hides such as cork bark, wood, leaf litter or plants, not a thin strip above the waterline |
| Water section | Clean water a crab can walk into, go fully under and climb out of from any point |
| Lid | Closes with no gaps, including around cables and tubing |
Why does the water matter so much in a land crab’s tank? Vampire crabs go into the water to molt, so a crab that can’t get fully under has nowhere safe to shed its shell.
Before you order, run through these checks:
- The lid is shut and you can’t find a gap a small crab could squeeze through.
- You can read humidity on your own gauge, and it stays high between mistings.
- There are enough hides on land that every crab can get out of sight at once.
Test the water section first
Check it for ammonia and nitrite before any crab goes in. Both should read 0 on a test, with an established biological filter behind them; a few weeks on the calendar doesn’t prove the water is ready.
Which animals can share the water section with Purple Vampire Crabs?
Neocaridina shrimp are our first choice, and small, peaceful fish can work too. 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 that water inside the Neocaridina range of 65-78°F (18-26°C), which meets the crab’s band at 72-78°F (22-26°C), and never warm it past that for the crabs. Keep only small, peaceful fish, because 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. Rarely isn’t never, so don’t add shrimp you’d hate to lose.
Other crabs are a different matter. Two Geosesarma that look alike aren’t necessarily the same species, so give each of our other vampire crab lines an enclosure of its own.
Choosing male or female Purple Vampire Crabs for your group
You pick the sex of each crab with the Male or Female option on this page, so decide first whether you want a mixed group or crabs kept only for display. We don’t promise breeding, clutch size or the number of young from any order.
If you do keep males and females together and crablets turn up, expect the adults to eat the ones they find. Crablets are usually moved to a tank of their own to grow up. Keeping several adults? Watch how the group settles over the first weeks, and if one crab keeps getting chased out of cover, add more hides or split the group.
Ordering Purple Vampire Crabs from Vietnam
Shipping is a flat USD 120 per order to every country. Shrimp Aquatics pays the duties and taxes the courier bills against the shipment, on every route. You are not asked to settle a customs charge before the box is released to you.
Confirming your own import rules is part of ordering. We cannot tell you that live freshwater invertebrates are legal to import where you live.
Orders are handled in 1-2 business days after payment clears. Once the courier collects the box, transit is normally 2-3 days. Customs, weather or a courier backlog can still move that, and the handling and packing details are in our shipping policy.
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. Read the live arrival guarantee before you order so you know what the video has to show.
Arrival day for your Purple Vampire Crabs
Follow the instructions packed with your order, since the packing and transit time can change what’s right. Open the box in a quiet room, film one continuous unboxing from the sealed box, don’t handle the crabs, and let them walk into cover on their own. A safe default is to leave new crabs alone for the first few days apart from your normal misting, and to skip feeding on the first day. After that, offer small portions and lift anything uneaten before it molds.
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