# Vampire Crabs keep dying



## TaylorMario (May 20, 2018)

My Vampire crab tank setup currently has:
-reptile soil
-sand
-Frog Moss, Entodon moss, Short Capsule moss and a few others. 
-Drift wood that I found and washed
-The water dish is big and takes up 15% of the entire tank and only has rain water in it.
-The hygrometer usually reads about 40-50 humidty which I cant keep high for some reason
-Temp of tank is 60F to 70 (should try to get it to 80 i think)
-was feeding them crickets but then noticed a cricket eating one of my dead crabs so I got rid of crickets and now feed them Hermit Crab food by Zoo Med which is what big als recommended. I have blood worms but I heard they can be filled with parasites (sounds risky) and i'm not sure how you feed them to a crab.
-I dont have a lid to my terrarium so maybe the humidity is escaping but i cant have a lid in order to keep my lights shining into the tank and providing heat
-lights are: 25W repti Basking spot light which i never turn off since my basement can get cold and a florescent for the plants which is on a timer. 



So I have had nothing but trouble with Vampire crabs and Red-devils. I purchased them at Big Al's in Ontario Canada who claims they are privately bred. I have lost about 15 crabs over the course of 4 months. I started out with 8 and they were doing pretty good at first and then started to die off one by one every few days. I was so mad as they cost $12 a piece and so I went back and told them what had happened. They told me to use Prime in the water dish so that it detoxifies the ammonium and nitrites. Then I purchased one individual so that I wouldn't have mass casualties again because I hate killing them. He lived about 5 days before he died. I went back to them and they said to try it again but increase the humidity of the tank. I spray my tank with rain water a lot now and he still died and some of the pellets I was feeding him even turned white with fuzz as maybe it was so humid that mold was growing. I don't know what to do as I really want to keep vampire crabs even if I cant keep them with the red devils. They clearly are dying by themselves and in the group so It must be something to do with my setup. What am I doing wrong? everything? I would add an image but when I hit add image it asks me to enter the URL for my image and its not on the internet so doesn't work. 

Thanks, for any advice you can share


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## Bindimatt (Sep 7, 2016)

Hi,

It sounds like heat and humidity are too low for starters, I kept mine in a fully planted Exo-Terra at 72-80 Fahrenheit (time of day dependent) with no lower than 70% humidity (and this was only just before misting) much like dart frogs, unfortunately when I went away a family member failed to keep up with the misting and they all perished.

Currently I'm setting up a 60/40 land/water paludarium build so I shouldn't have any similar issues again.

I'd definitely try and sort those if your going to try with them again.

Matt


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## pirminiamac (Dec 20, 2017)

Get yourself a lid and some plants to keep up humidity and get rid of the basking light it’s not nessasary and is probably cooking your poor crabs, if you need to raise the heat use a heat mat on a stat on the side or underside of the enclosure but I just keep mine at room temp. Humidity is 70-90% at all times.


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