Vampires and Devils

[Totenkampf]

i just fed them about 15 gut loaded two week old crickets and then sat motionless to observe them. first off, that size or smaller seems good for them although pinheads might be better. placing the crickets in there got them to start foraging but to say they were hunting, or even 'predacious' in nature, is a little ambitious. they are very clumsy hunters. their vision does not seem to be binocular at all, they dont judge distances well and seem to just strike at movement. their strikes are very inaccurate as well. i watched one capture and take the rear legs of the cricket only to let the cricket escape while he ate those. instead of finishing the cricket off he was content to start eating peat and moss while another cricket walked across his head. it was kinda neat to see him use his legs to corral the cricket under him like a tarantula will. i froze a few of the crickets before calcium dusting them so that i can be sure that they will be found before the dust rubs off. im not entirely sure that all of them travel to the food dish though. they seem to find a burrow or hiding space and dont travel far from there to forage. still no signs of territorial aggression. the current pair per 10 gallons stocking rule of thumb that i am using might be better off if it was converted to a pairs per XXX square inches rule since they seem to spread out. a 40 breeder would support far more of these than a 40 long aquarium.

[Totenkampf]

OFFSPRING!

i noticed something crawling around in the substrate and, since i have wild collected plants in the vivarium, assumed i had brought in a seed tick or something. On closer look, it is a baby crab with a carapace of about 1/8"-3/16" wide across the sides. they are brown on top and white on bottom with white legs. i will pet him and keep him and call him george. unfortunately my camera skillz are weak and i could not overcome the glare to get a shot of him. i have read the RDC are the easiest geosesarma to breed and i guess they are right. i never noticed a gravid female or any females carrying young around on top of their shells like the mandarin crabs do so this is a surprise. i guess thats why the females have been hiding.

[PJB1984]

We recently setup a 10 gallon paludarium with about 2/3s land and 1/3 water. It has about an inch of hydro balls (used as a false bottom) then a layer of fine mesh (we used the stuff you place down in your garden to keep weeds from growing) then jungle mix on top of that. We siliconed a tube (like the kind you use for air pumps) at the bottom to syphon out water (we plan later on to add a drip wall to keep the water from getting stagnant) Had we done this right we would've used egg crate and made a false bottom but it was our first time and we didn't know. The water portion has several live plants in it as well as a piece of driftwood for the crabs to get in and out of the water, along with a few fish (which don't seem to be bothered or bother the crabs). The land part had leaf litter covering the jungle mix as well as several pieces of cork bark. We also have live plants planted in the jungle mix and some cork bark siliconed to the walls for something for them to climb on(although in the two weeks we've had them they have yet to climb on them). In the tank we have 4 red devil crabs and 3 vampire crabs, we have yet to see any aggression toward one another between any of them ( I read online that they can not be kept in the same tank, although another site I read said that they kept the both and they were fine) so we figured we would try and separate them if we needed to. They are feed several different foods; live crickets (which I've only seen one hunt and eat), sprinkled fish food on the land part, calcium dusted shrimp & lobster pellets, frozen bloodworms (thawed first), springtails (ordered a culture off line and just dumped them in), and whatever they find and eat out of the jungle mix. I also ordered pillbugs (or rollie pollies) but they weren't alive when we received them so waiting for another shipment to see how they like them. The first few days they all hid and we didn't really see them much, now that they are getting more comfortable in the tank they are out more and don't really run and hide when we look into the cage. They seem to like the land more than the water, for the most part they stay out of the water unless it's on the driftwood or plants. However this morning we did find one in the water and it looked very light and pale in color as we looked closer we realize that it had just molted in the water and it was the shell we we're looking at. The crab it self was one of the red devils and his color is still lighter for now as his new shell (exoskeleton) is still soft for a few days. Over all they seem to be doing very well in here! We keep the tank around 72-76 degrees and around 75-90% humidity. They seem to be more active and like it better around these conditions, we had it up to about 80 and they seemed to just hide. We just added a exoterra monsoon set to spray for 10 seconds every hour. Before we got the monsoon we used a fogger and made sure to keep the tank covered to keep it humid, they seem to like te monsoon better than the fogger, guess its more like rainfall instead of not being able to see anything because the fog was so thick. Since the monsoon we keep the top cracked a little, and have yet to have one try to escape, even though everything we have read online says that they love to escape. We have a uv light in a hood fixture mostly for the plants but I guess the crabs as well. As well as a heat lamp which we just turn on every now and then, although the cage maintains a pretty constant temperature and humidity level with just the uv light and monsoon. This has pretty much been a try and learn thing since finding any information on these crabs on the Internet is next to impossible! They have several different names, from what we have read they are called vampire crabs ( general term for all colors of them, bi color being the yellow/black/purple ones; red devil being the mainly red ones; mandarin being mostly orange) I've also read them being called carnaval crabs and scientific name is Geosesarma sp. I believe that there are more names for them as well but that's all I can remember finding them under. There is almost no information on keeping them other than two websites I found which both state pretty much the same information. We are hoping to breed them as we got them from a local pet store and they are wild caught. I looked everywhere for them online to buy but either they were wild caught or they wanted $20+ per crab. Locally we paid $10 per crab and they had a 7 day guarantee as well and them not having to be shipped across the country. They are originally from somewhere near Sulawesi (or most the sites we found about them said that). From what we have read and seen online they are freshwater (which is what our water is, kept at 78 degrees) and they can reproduce without having to make it back to the ocean! Meaning they should be able to be bred in captivity. I have read a few articles about people successfully breeding them in captivity. The female keeps the eggs in under her carapace just like fiddler crabs but unlike fiddler crabs the vampire crabs eggs hatch into miniature versions of adults. I've got several pictures of both the crabs and the tank but don't think I can upload them on here from my phone.

[Jozle]

OFFSPRING!

i noticed something crawling around in the substrate and, since i have wild collected plants in the vivarium, assumed i had brought in a seed tick or something. On closer look, it is a baby crab with a carapace of about 1/8"-3/16" wide across the sides. they are brown on top and white on bottom with white legs. i will pet him and keep him and call him george. unfortunately my camera skillz are weak and i could not overcome the glare to get a shot of him. i have read the RDC are the easiest geosesarma to breed and i guess they are right. i never noticed a gravid female or any females carrying young around on top of their shells like the mandarin crabs do so this is a surprise. i guess thats why the females have been hiding.

Congrats!

[Geral]

Congrats!!!
Btw
If u breed crabs u can breed anything!!!lol

[Jozle]

Congrats!!!
Btw
If u breed crabs u can breed anything!!!lol

+1

[Totenkampf]

Congrats!!!
Btw
If u breed crabs u can breed anything!!!lol

lol, iono, i dont seem to be able to keep cherry shrimp going. its too funny.

[Totenkampf]

thanks for the writeup PJB...your observations pretty much confirm mine. i keep mine under much the same conditions other than i have less water than i would like in this reclaimed dart frog setup. i am building a 40 gallon breeder sized river vivarium ATM.

i can confirm that these things can run along a background wall like it was flat and they are fast. it seems that they choose to stay low to the ground. i put my food dish on top of a clump of pillow moss and they will not go up on top of it to get to the food. they will when it is in a lower lying area. the juviniles can actually walk up glass if there is condensation so i am hoping that they are not running around the office now.

[PJB1984]

Would love to see pictures of your 40 gallon once it's done! *Most of ours stay long the bottom but the biggest red devil male has no problem climbing onto of our cork bark tubes which are a little more than half way to the top of the tank, as well as one of the vampire crabs seems to love the fern, spends most of its time about half way up it just sitting there. *A little update... Just noticed the other day that one of the female red devils is pregnant, obviously they like there current setup! Although we did lose two of the three vampire crabs, didn't look like there was any violence against them though. The one vampire crab that is still alive is doing great and looks even better than before! Two of the male red devils have molted (both did so in the water) and all of them are defiantly bigger than when we got them!

[Jozle]

After 6 weeks, I returned to all my red devils alive and well and 3 dead vampires. Here's a video of two of my red devils attacking my net while I was cleaning out the decomposing moss.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkOowoUdnEA&feature=youtu.be

[Totenkampf]

congrats on most of the crabs making it. some havent been so lucky...mine are still doing well but i think i may have lost most of the young. i had just put crickets in there before i noticed the babies and couldnt catch them all again. i am sure that they would eat any babies they found. i have read that the babies need more water than i currently have so i will have to wait until the new terrarium is built before i expect to rear any young. i have been really busy at work so i hope that i can make a lot of progress on it this weekend.

[Jozle]

Totenkampf,what temperature do you keep your terrarium at? I have no heating whatsover so the water temperature stays at constant 75 degrees while my room is at the same.

[Totenkampf]

it stays around 75-78 degrees due to the building climate control. the lights cause the high end temp when they come on. the new vivarium has a reservoir with a fixed range (78 degrees) submersible heater in it but i doubt that it will come on much. i find it easier to heat water in a water feature than to use a heat pad under or on the back wall of a terrarium. it helps the humidity too.

[PJB1984]

So after thinking that the babies were either eaten or the female didn't have them (seeing as how she disappeared from sight for 2 weeks, and when we saw her again the eggs were gone) we noticed at least two babies tonight!!! They are probably with legs maybe an eighth of an inch long (about twice the size of a fruitfly). Hopefully there is more than 2, now everything we see looks like a baby lol. They seem to be out moving around more *now assuming they are bigger than when they were born, they are roughly two to four weeks old, we noticed the female that was pregnant again about two weeks ago so must have been born sometime in the two weeks she was missing.

[Totenkampf]

she will definately hide when they are ready to hatch. they are camo'd so well it is difficult to see them for sure. I have found that they seem to prefer a water area in their tank in order to grow out, asking some internet breeders seems to confirm this. the ones that would answer me anyways.