Filtration, heating, hardscape, and maintenance.
Got the mineral mixed and the water dialed in, and now you’re stuck on what goes on the bottom? Use an inert bed: crushed lava rock or basalt gravel for most Sulawesi tanks, dark, coarse enough to stay open and…
How much tank does one rabbit snail actually need? We’d give one adult rabbit snail (Tylomelania sp.) 20 gallons (76 L), two or three of them 29 gallons (110 L), and roughly 10 gallons (38 L) more for each snail…
Yes. Vampire crabs can climb out of an open-top enclosure, and an open top lets out the humid air they live in, so every vampire crab tank needs a lid that closes all the way round. If you’ve got a…
Yes, give a berried vampire crab (Geosesarma) soil she can dig into. She spends most of her brooding weeks out of sight, often dug into the ground or tucked in a burrow, and damp soil lets her dig a hiding…
No, vampire crabs don’t need UV or UVB lighting. Ordinary aquarium light, or indirect daylight from a window, is enough when it gives the paludarium a steady day and night and keeps the plants growing. What the crabs do depend…
Yes. Vampire crabs need a water area in their vivarium, and it has to be one a crab can climb into, get fully under and climb back out of. They live mostly on land, so the water takes the smaller…
No, vampire crabs don’t need a bioactive enclosure. What they do need is a humid, lidded paludarium that’s mostly land, with plenty of hides and a water section every crab can climb into, fully enter and leave. Springtails, isopods and…
Yes, a vampire crab can live in a simple enclosure if it still has damp land with hides, water the crab can fully enter, humid air and a lid with no gaps. Any tank with land and water is a…
Mist a closed vampire crab paludarium about once a day, more often while new moss and plants settle in and less once they’ve adapted. In practice that runs from twice a day to every few days. Let the moss set…
No. Every vampire crab line in the hobby needs a land floor of soft, damp substrate it can dig into. It also needs enough cover for each crab to get out of sight, and that includes the ones that climb…
Keep a vampire crab tank humid by closing the lid, keeping the moss and land substrate damp, and misting about once a day, more often while new moss is settling in. You don’t need to hit a set number. What…
Land cycling in a vampire crab paludarium is really two jobs running on two clocks. The water section has to grow the bacteria that turn waste into nitrate, the same way an aquarium does. The land has to settle until…
