Temporary Nep Crabitat tubarium

[swords]

Overall 56 Quart Sterlite tubarium

I've done two water changes now and what a difference it's made have a look! No flash this time so there's more 3D depth in the pic too.

I know the water looks bad, it's from the freshly expanded Chilean sphagnum so I'll be doing 1-2 water changes a day til they arrive to dispel as much of the tannins as possible.

Some of the plants:
N. amp "x harlequin"
U. gramminifolia
live sphagnum
other moss and lichens
pepperomia
mini fern
microsorum aquarium fern
"duffi" button fern
selaginella
Purple wandering jew
bacopa monieri

On the "real crabitat" I've got the glass water/soil divider glued in to keep the soil and water separate I'm waiting for that to cure before starting anything else on it.

 

[Halt]

I tried that but with a 40 Quart Terra & my experiment went really really bad. I didn't really change the water, so the peat&spag got REALLY, REALLY, I WANT TO DIE RIGHT NOW, smelly. So I don't really have tips other than don't let anything rot?

My original Idea was to keep a mosquito pool on one end & my tropicals on the other end, it went so bad, the terra cracked.. probably from the smell. Haha, no. I slammed it on something..

 

[swords]

I didn't use any peat, I've had bad experiences with that in wet habitats too - I've never forgotten the stench! LOL
I just used expanded LFS. I've got a compressed 5 kilo bale of chilean sphagnum and barely scratched the surface of it doing this mound. I will release a few spoonfulls of isopods in there to work on aerating the soil and eating any fungi & molds who pop up. Crabs might like to eat some of the pods too. As I said this is only temporary for a few weeks while their permanent enclosure gets completed and planted. I will most likely leave this setup with far less water (2" deep now) once I move them out and just see how this goes as a grow out tank for these plants to be later harvested for use in other tanks.

 

[jafvortex93]

hmm is that just a storage container? i was thining of this as a terrarium setup (with a bit of modifications). like the mylar on the side, its fairly easy to cut holes for a cpu fan and a fogger. you think that would work what i have descripted? and dude thats awesome. i had crabs once, when the whole get a crab with a colored shell thing was going around. it died within a month cuz i didnt read up on what to do, i just told my parents religously that i knew what i was doing and how to care for it. i let it sit in a tank feeding it god knows what (cuz i dont remember).

 

[swords]

Yes, it's a storage bin. I sure wish they were glass clear, I'd switch all my tanks to them the prices are so right and easy to modify. I grow all my potted plants (also roaches and isopod colony) in these sterlite tubs with a sheet of glass overtop. I drill 3" holes in each end for cross ventilation and screen them with aluminum bug screen this helps keep humidity high but without cutting out air movement as long as there is a fan going in the room. It's way cheaper than buying aquariums for "just plants" but gives the benefit of a terrarium existence for the stock plants so they don't have culture shock being moved into a new environments over and over. I just transfer cuttings/divisions of the plants from the growing tubs to vivariums for the real viewing enjoyment.


I've never owned any kind of crabs before and these red vampire crabs are essentially "brand new" so there is like NO culture info out there on this new species other than from the supplier (Herp book author Philipe de Vosjoli) who's released this first batch of his own breeding. He said in his email they are "very easy" but compared to . He uses these tubs with foam blocks as shown in the ad in the other post for keeping and breeding. I hope I don't kill them and am able to breed them successfully. They were expensive and not just for the crabs themselves! LOL

Being exclusively carnivores and willing to attack/eat crickets and other feeder animals I am happy with that as there'll be no change from my other critters in the feeding department. I try some live ghost shrimps and guppies as food for them in the water cos the store by me has them for as cheap as crickets. Supposedly these guys will eat anything that has protein in it (live or dead natural or flake/pellet) and roundly reject vegetable matter so the plants are pretty much safe.

Don't they sell "starter bacteria" anymore? I looked today when I went to buy dechlorinator and Iodide and did not find any. I would add it to the water portion of the display tank as soon as I get the water setup if I could locate it.

UPDATED PIC AT THE TOP

 

[Ant]

You could used ecoearth. Cps are suppose to grow just fine in it and its what I used for my hermit crabs. (I assume land crabs have similar needs in humidity and a need for a stable substrate to dig in.) It didn't smell and it didn't leech any soil into the water when I saturated the blocks.

 

[swords]

I dunno about eco-earth (coir) and plants, for now I'm not convinced they are good together. The plants and mosses in my first 3 ghost mantid vivariums are in straight eco-earth and are visibly going downhill compared to the peat & oak leaf mould, soils in all the other forest terrariums. Those plants have needed pruning and replanting several times due to the tanks small sizes whereas the eco-earth tanks grew OK for a month or so but now they are looking pretty poor. But I would not use peat/oak leaf in this temporary tank though since I did not divide the land/water, just saturated a few chunks of LFS and mounded it up.

Their permanent tank has a specific water area and the planting media (peat, oak leaf & LFS) will not be in contact with it other than any moss/plants growing on the margin between the two. I've just checked my water divider after curing since last night and it's good! No leaks, holding 2 gallons and runs across the entire front. I'm designing it in such a way that there will be no way to tell by looking from the front or the sides that there is a divider.

 

[kayaker78]

My concern would be the long term effect of soft acidic water on the crabs

 

[swords]

That's true I was curious about that myself and is the reason why I've made the division between land and water in the permanent enclosure. The water I was thinking of using is natural spring water (from a local spring that runs year round) it rates around Ph 7.6 - 7.8. Ph 7.6 is recommended by the breeder as it's what he says his water reads though they do not sit in water all day in general. The water used to water the land portion/misting will be R/O to be gentler on the plants. With the divider any mingling of the water should be very minimal. I could also use R/O water for everything and just add some natural colored calci sand to the water area to raise the PH locally to 7.5. That may make things far easier for everyone involved and the crabs can eat it if they want.

The crabs which visit /sit in ampullaria pitchers and amp. fluid is recorded around Ph 4 - 5 which is rather acidic so they are apparently able to tolerate it for short periods.

Concrete info on these little guys is hard to come by been scouring google. A few websites from Germany and the UK (where they appear to have been available longer than here) state that a naturalistic paludarium as used for dart frogs with small water area and large land area is the best habitat for them. A water ph of 6 - 8. Calcium dusting the feeders is enough to supplement their needs, and one drop of Iodine per 5 gallons of water to help with successful molting on all FW invertebrates.