HCA: Hermit Crab Association

This is a question for members with large hermits and large tanks. My large and smalls have been housed separately bc of my concern that the big boys may collapse the pockets and trap the smaller ones with their subterranean digging.Tank size is 72, total occupants would be about 30 with 8 jumbos (1.75" opening and up) and the rest smaller. The majority of the smaller ones are under an inch with a few wee ones, and a couple just over the 1" mark. I have 8" deep sub, half sand, half EE, 2 shower caddies in the big tank and would really like to get past my hangup so I'm not maintaining multiple tanks and bc of the cost involved in double decor, electricity and food offerings.What kind of situations do you find at deep clean time? Any collapsed pockets and trapped crabs?

My largest one is just shy of base ball size then I have four that are just a little bigger than a golf ball and then three quater size ones all in a thirty gallon L style and they are doing just fine.Yesterday I put in a second level shell shop and now that there is more space on the ground the little ones have a place to go and get out of the way of the bigger ones.The only thing I need to do is get a bigger hide I had to take the two level hide I had built last week down so I could get the shell shop in.I haven't had any problems with deep cleans yet, I just did one two months ago and it went off with out a problem.

I can't say anything about deep cleans as of yet, but so far I haven't had any problems with the collapsing of tunnels. I only have 10 crabby babies in mine, so I can keep track of there whereabouts pretty easily.

I've been keeping small and large crabbies together since a few months after I started crabbing and never had size difference related problems. Right now I have crabbies ranging from penny to baseball size in my 75g and they're fine. I don't find any issues during deep cleans, collapsed tunnels, or trapped crabs that were caused by the big guys. My jumbos haven't historically been much of diggers but when they did dig down to molt, there weren't any problems. I'm another one who can't stand multi-tank running. I even go crazy when I have to use ISO for newbies, and those tats aren't even big at all (I have a 10g and 20L for ISO's, it depends on which I'll use)

I've got a mixed tank, though as the years go on, it's turning into mostly medium/large crabs. The only thing I've ever noticed is that I can't find the littlest guys in the 75, even when they're up and about! It takes major decor rearranging (or some really attractive food) to locate them. The big guys leave big windows and their shells stick out even when they're "hiding," but the little guys are very hard to see.

I have a 75g with both small and medium crabs, my jumbo died a while ago. So far I haven't had problems. I have hidden cork tunnels and cork bark pieces in the substrate which are a favourite spot to hide and molt under, I noticed that. You just need to replace the cork after a year or so since it starts to go soft when buried.So far my small crabs have been growing into bigger crabs with only very few losses that I would say were bad molts and in one case maybe PPS.