黃越南勾手蟹 Yellow Pirate Crab (Vietorintalia rubrum)

Caring Tips:
Pirate Crab (Vietorintalia rubrum) is one of my favourite freshwater crab. Same as shrimps, warrior crabs’ color vary from different locations. Their color can be brown, light brown, green, red, blue, apple green and sky blue. The male crabs have one very big claw. Normal body size is around 3-4cm excluding legs.

Pirate Crab are carnivorous and very aggressive. They can easily kill similar size crayfish, scorpion and other freshwater crabs.

Warrior crabs can be kept in small box with water level at 50-60% of his body height. They don’t like deep water. However, when they molt, the water level should be cover 100% of his body height. You can feed the crabs turtle food, fish food, dry shrimp, live shrimp, roaches, live fish etc... They can live 10 years in wild. In captivity, I have friends kept them for 4-5 years.

A paludairum or a vivarium will be a more comfortable environment. Warrior crabs are good climbers, they can escape through a wire. So it is highly recommend to use a lid for paludarium.

For scaping, It is better to use more rock than soil. Crabs like to dig, if you want to grow plants, you may use plastic grid above plants’ roots and avoid crab digging. This is a very useful method. One the crab get used to his home, they won’t dig anymore. It is better to provide them several caves (holes) to hide. The hole size should be double of his body size so that he can molt easily.

Pirate Crab are 100% freshwater. They don’t need saltwater to breed. In wild, male and female live together in the same hole after mating for weeks. Male will leave after certain period of time (I am not sure the exact duration). The female will hide inside her hole till next spring. Then, new babies will come.