Vampire crabs keep dying

[Ray butts]

Welcome to Panzerwelten Ray - and don't worry, there is an English subforum for non-German speakers.

The plants come from the local garden-center and where allready submerged in a big tank with water. However - i did clean them leaf by leaf before putting them into the tank.

Hm, please read http://www.panzerwelten.de/forum/thread-1637.html

But i think i can rule that out as a possible cause of death because this specific plant was purchased between 2 populations.

I'm not quite sure I understand You correctly. You mean You bought the first "series" of crabs, they dies and then You inserted that plant? After that another series of crabs died?

Then the plant may not be the cause, but it would be a possibility since plants are mostly heavily fertilized (and mmost of the tiomes by copper - harmless to us but a killer for invertebrates).


There remains one main cause:

What causes stress to crabs?

Exactly, stress. Wild captives are caught out of their life, imported (often under very unsuitable conditions), transported again from the importer to a local shop and then again from the shop to someone's home, that IS a lot of stress for these tiny creatures. BUT it is unusual to lose that many beings as You did, so we should try to find a cause for that so that we maybe find a solution. ;-)

Please have a look at all the important threads in this subforum http://www.panzerwelten.de/forum/forum-48.html – even if it does not seem to fit Your problem. Maybe You still do find a little snitch regarding You and Your crabs.

For now, after a stressful day of updating the board software, that's it. Maybe tomorrow we'll find some answers…

Ok - thank you! I will follow your advice regarding the plants carefully and i will check that thread-link again. Went trough it several times before allready.

However - i also decided to start anew cause the tank the petshop adviced is more suitable for water crabs then land crabs like the geosesarrma crab. This should remove any possible cause of death and any possible toxins in the old tank. Then i can clean out the old one thoroughly and put aple crabs in it. It may sound a bit drastic but if that wat it takes to keep them alive then thats wat im gonna do.