Tuesday, December 27, 2011

A Vampire Crab for Christmas?

This year my daughter got a very unexpected present from someone, that even we were taken by surprise. At about 6:30 P.M. on Christmas Eve my daughter came home with a new pet. This pet is known as a Vampire Crab. Imagine our surprise! We had to make a quick dash to the last store that was open on Christmas Eve before they closed. We had to try to get a tank and supplies for this little fellow. It is easy to imagine that our Christmas was thrown off a little bit, especially since we had no knowledge of this little creature's existence. I didn't even know there was even such a colorful crab out there like this.
This picture I have included is actually a very zoomed in picture of my daughter's vampire crab. This little guy is actually a youth and is no bigger than the tip of my thumb. From my research they never get bigger than 2 inches and that includes the legs in this measurement. Their claws cannot open large enough to pinch a finger.

Right now we have this little guy in a very basic tank, with a Tupperware container filled with water for it to swim in. We still need to build him a new tank. This little guy is a freshwater crab and needs to have both land and water to go in. Our plans is to make one of those half water half land tanks, like a frog tank. From our research we found that this little guy is very social and needs to be in a group, so it looks like we will have to get more if we want it to survive.

My original plan was to find out where it was native to and release it there. Turns out they come from Indonesia, so that doesn't look like it will be happening.

So, it looks like we will be in this for the long run. The things I do for my animal loving nature and my daughter.

Unfortunately there isn't much out there on these guys, so it is really hard to find out much on them. So if anyone has more information on them or the best way to build a half water half land tank I would love to know.

2 comments:

  1. Oh wow, I have never heard of these! Merry (belated) Christmas :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I hope you also had a very Merry belated Christmas and a Happy New year.

    ReplyDelete