Fall cleaning
Since our move with the crabs, we have lost more and more of them. I think 5 in the last month or so.
We thought the move had been successful for the crabs, but with the losses we sustained afterward, I'm just not so sure. However, to be certain that was the problem, we did a deep clean yesterday, and made some adjustments to the tank.
When we moved, we didn't bring any sand with us, and I needed to get the crabs into their big tank again so I just used what I had on hand... lots and lots of coconut fiber. our crabs are used to having most of the tank in a sand substrate, so we've changed back to that. We've also scaled down the amount of *stuff* in the big tank. There were so many climbing toys and hiding places that there wasn't all that much room for them to just run around on the ground, which I think is also important to have.
We also took the small crabs (4 E's and a Ruggie) and put them in their own tank (a 10 gallon for now, but when we can afford to get a bigger tank and/or stand I suspect we'll get a 29 gallon tank and stand for that too. Honestly, with the size of some of our crabs these days, I feel a lot better about having 11 in the 40 gallon.
The big crabs also got another change - we went and found a mini paint tray with a good sized "deep end" for their salt water pool. With two jumbo (or nearly so) strawberries in that tank, our previous (good sized) water dishes just weren't quite up to the task. We kept the previous fresh water dish for now, just due to space concerns.
Hopefully Mike will take some nice pictures to post up tonight.
We thought the move had been successful for the crabs, but with the losses we sustained afterward, I'm just not so sure. However, to be certain that was the problem, we did a deep clean yesterday, and made some adjustments to the tank.
When we moved, we didn't bring any sand with us, and I needed to get the crabs into their big tank again so I just used what I had on hand... lots and lots of coconut fiber. our crabs are used to having most of the tank in a sand substrate, so we've changed back to that. We've also scaled down the amount of *stuff* in the big tank. There were so many climbing toys and hiding places that there wasn't all that much room for them to just run around on the ground, which I think is also important to have.
We also took the small crabs (4 E's and a Ruggie) and put them in their own tank (a 10 gallon for now, but when we can afford to get a bigger tank and/or stand I suspect we'll get a 29 gallon tank and stand for that too. Honestly, with the size of some of our crabs these days, I feel a lot better about having 11 in the 40 gallon.
The big crabs also got another change - we went and found a mini paint tray with a good sized "deep end" for their salt water pool. With two jumbo (or nearly so) strawberries in that tank, our previous (good sized) water dishes just weren't quite up to the task. We kept the previous fresh water dish for now, just due to space concerns.
Hopefully Mike will take some nice pictures to post up tonight.
