Problems With Humidity Gauge; Lost 4 Crabs

moire_eel · Post by **moire_eel** » Tue May 03, 2005 5:27 am

I had posted a week or so ago that I thought there could be disease in my tank because I had lost four crabs for seemingly no good reason. Well, I may have found a reason -- a no-good lyin' humidity gauge. I got a new digital gauge for Christmas (so I don't know the brand or where it came from) and I used it side-by-side with my TOM gauge for two weeks until I was satisfied that it worked right. So I know it used to work. But I began to be suspicious of it (since I became suspicious of practically everything in my tank, lol) and the fact that I hadn't seen a low humidity reading on it for quite a while. I took it out of my tank and after one night it claimed the humidity in the house was 56 percent. Yeah right. I left it out longer and it seemed to get more accurate. I think it may have had some wet substrate in it. I got a new TOM gauge in the meantime. I decided to put the faulty white one back in next to the new TOM to see how much they differed. The white one had dried out, and should be okay again, I thought. The first day, the white one read 10 percent high on the humidity. So it was off, but it wasn't *awful*. I left it in for more observation. Then one night a cooler, dryer air mass moved in. My moonglow on a thermostat took care of the heating. But when I got up, the humidity readings were as follows:bad gauge: 77 percentnew gauge: 57 percentI nearly screamed -- no joke! I grabbed the mister and started pumping it into the tank like my life depended on it. So I wonder how many times in the past few months the humidity has been that low in my tank and my gauge misled me into thinking that it was fine. If my tank had been spending lots of time at less than 60 percent humidity, that could definitely explain the deaths. Sigh. I didn't even realize that digitals could be off. From now on, I will be taking all my digital gauges out once a week and making sure they agree with each other. I also ordered extras. Don't be surprised if you come to my house and find ten digital gauges in my tank.

tnyfootprntz · Post by **tnyfootprntz** » Tue May 03, 2005 7:45 am

Wow, that's scary. Thanks for the update and warning for all of us to keep regular checks on our gauges. I was wondering how much excess moisture (condensation, misting, etc.) some gauges can tolerate before malfunctioning.I'm so sorry for your losses.

Rachel · Post by **Rachel** » Tue May 03, 2005 8:42 am

Wouldn't it take a really prolonged, constant exposure to too low humidity for it to cause death? Longer than just a few months?I've heard of crabs being in a KK for a year or more (no saran wrap or anything) without succumbing to death.I really do hope this is the answer to your misfortune though. I've had my go-around with hygrometers...that's for sure!!Good Luck!

moire_eel · Post by **moire_eel** » Tue May 03, 2005 9:41 am

I think it would probably depend on the hardiness of individual crabs. I have 15 other crabs in that tank that seem to be fine -- sever al have been extremely active throughout the last few months. It could be a case of low humidity plus other stressors -- the dust I stirred up packing to move, or the move itself -- caused their demise. There's no way to ever really know. But given that this is a definite problem that I can address, I hope that's it. I still won't merge my isos with the main tank for a good long while yet, just to be sure.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Tue May 03, 2005 1:25 pm

Wow - off to order a back up gauge! Thanks for the info.T.K.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Tue May 03, 2005 1:47 pm

My digital Temp/Humidity gauge is battery operated (flukers) and I replaced the batteries twice in a month. If the battery is low it reads wrong. I normally have 35% humidity in my house and it read 60% so I started playing with it and discovered the battery department so off to Walmart to buy a new battery. Sure enough it works good, I just change the batteries alot.

moire_eel · Post by **moire_eel** » Tue May 03, 2005 2:54 pm

Hm, that's something to try. Scary that low batteries could make a gauge read wrong, though. I'd much rather it just not work at all. But maybe it's good that I controlled the impulse to jump up and down on the bad gauge.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed May 04, 2005 2:01 am

Analog hygrometers can be calibrated but not the digitals. If you need to know how to do that you can search google and it will come up.

tnyfootprntz · Post by **tnyfootprntz** » Fri May 06, 2005 2:03 am

So it would be good to keep the old analog gauge, calibrate it, and use it to check the digital gauge, I guess.