FishProfiles.com Message Forums

I rescued two hermit crabs almost a month ago. Spent $70 on a small home and sand and food and shells for them, not knowing if they would live or not. So, now I'm trying to make a more permanant home for them. I have a 36"L x 18"W x 17"H critter tank. The glass and seals aren't strong enough to hold water or it would be a fish tank, believe me. This is going to be the new home for my two rescued crabs and the little crabby friend I bought them at the pet store a few days ago. My guess is the tank is somewhere between 45 and 50 gallons. I'm going to need about 4 inches of substrate. Which happens to be beach sand. Which I will be collecting in a 5g bucket in the middle of the night to bring home and bake. I bet the smell will raise the dead. I have a problem though. The previous top was a slide in, and the cat quickly did away with the screening on the top. So, the front pane of glass is 1" below the other sides. I'm thinking about building my own top with four boards and chicken wire. I think it would be adequate to hold in some crabbies and hold out the cat. Some pictures of the tank, the problem, and the cat checking it out. My cat is HUGE.

Kids, the question is... how many 5g buckets of sand will it take to make between 3 and 4 inches of substrate in a tank of this size? Oh... and how long will it take to bake them with only one cookie sheet?

The short answer is......a lot. I have a 55 gallon tank and it took 85 pounds of Eco Complete (fairly sandy consistency, although not as fine) to get my substrate to a minimum depth of 3 inches for my planted tank. I don't know how many pounds a 5 gallon bucket of sand would be (depends on how wet it is), but I hope you're planning to haul and bake for a long time.

I think it might be easier for you (maybe not cheaper) to buy crab sand for them at the pet store. By the time you fininsh hauling that much sand around 5 gallons at time and attempting to bake it in your oven on a cookie sheet , it will have cost you more in time, effort, and mess!

I'm not really sure you will need 3-4 inches of sand anyway.....they should do fine with 1-2 inches and it would save money.

---

~~Melissa~~
"Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder."

The pet store crab sand is $6 for 1/2 a pound. Maybe I'll just get enough to cover the bottom and slowly work my up to 4 inches, lol. Maybe play sand from Home Depot or something could be ok.

The trouble with plain play sand is that crabs need sand with a certain mineral content (calcium and such) to stay healthy that might not be found in regular play sand. You might could use mostly play sand, and layer some crab sand on top of it. I know it will eventually get shifted around, but at least the mineral rich sand would be in there. I think just enough sand to cover the bottom would work...I don't ever recall seeing a really deep sand bed in any of the crabitats I've encountered.

My crabs loved their coco-hut....a little half of a cocnut shell with a hole cut out for them to go in. They also liked to climb the platic palm trees I had in there.

Your crabs won't be able to climb out as long as the climbing stuff you provide for them doesn't reach and/or touch the top of any of the tank sides...the big concern for you is keeping out the cat. A regular tank hood would probably be fine....they're certainly not air tight and it would go along way in keeping humidity inside the tank. This is very important for our little hermie friends. Their gills have to stay wet or they will die. I think something like a tank hood would work better than a screen at keeping kitty out and moisture in. IMO.

Edit: A tank hood should still fit on what's left of your platic framing....that missing piece shouldn't affect it too much.

---

~~Melissa~~
"Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder."

It's not a missing piece, just the top that came with it slid into place there. The screen was just a wire mesh, and between my cat (and my sisters cat when I lived with her) it was dismantled very fast. I've had it for 3 years now, empty. So now that I have these poor little crabs to take care of, I decided they would enjoy the room. I bought a screen top, but it's very heavy and thick. It's for large reptiles. There is about 1/8 of an inch gap between the lid and the top of the front panel, but none of my crabs can fit through there. I live on an island, so with the humidity already being as high as it is, I have two 29g fish tanks in the house, and so far I haven't had any trouble keeping their current screen top 10g moist. It's almost tropical down here in the summer, and it rains every other day. In the winter is when I'll have the humidity problem, from the heater drying the air out, but I constantly run humidifiers all over the house. My husband hates it, but I grew up in a swamp, when the air is dry I feel like I'm choking, lol. Someone did recommend the mats that go under office chairs on carpets, to cut one to cover most of the top of the tank, and it will hold moisture when the air is dry. I just bought a big flat shell that looks like a plate about 7 inches wide for a shallow pool, and some deeper shells for the salt and freshwater, and some pretty abalone shells for their food bowls. I'm going to decorate everything naturally. I didn't have to buy them... I live on the beach. But it's hot and muggy outside, and I'm lazy. They were $.99 so I bought them. I know they have to have the sand deep enough to burrow completely down into it because it makes them more comfortable when they're molting. I'm going to get my husband to come with me when he gets home to get some beach sand. I'll pack it in the 5g bucket, come home, bake it, and see how far it fills up the tank, then I'll know for sure a rough estimate of how much I will need. I just don't want to buy sand, when it's everywhere down here, lol. That just seems like a waste of money to me.

I took some sand from the beach for their little home, but it wasn't very much, so no one said anything. I think I might look a little more than suspicious carrying a big bucket full though, lol.

Might want to check your local and state rules and regs. on doing that. In some places, it's illegal to remove that kind of stuff, and the fines, if caught, can be considerable.

---

~~Melissa~~
"Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder."

I think the only regulations we have here is for the sand dunes and areas so many feet away from a turtle nest.

Well, the one bucket gave a good three inches. I'm thinking about whether or not I'm going to get more. Not right now though. One of my crabs has already buried himself, I think he's going to molt. He's had the molt bubble for a while now, and he looks so dull and pale. The place I rescued him from had no substrate at all, he didn't get a chance to molt I don't think. It's exciting.

Here's a tip for you.

Calcium supply ... buy a piece of cuttlefish bone (as sold for beak sharpening use in a budgie cage) and powder it. Add the powder to your sand to enrich the calcium content. That way, when the hermit crabs moult, they'll have sufficient calcium in the sand to assist them. Also, adding ground cuttlefish bone to the hermit crabs' food will probably have a beneficial effect.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002