HCA: Hermit Crab Association

Do crabs need a shelter like a coco hut? Or can you use plants and wood to create dark places for them to hide?I found mold in my tank this morning. It was on my 2 coco huts and my critter log. So I had to take them out and trash them. I have a new coco hut on order from the crabbage patch. Is there any way to treat it so mold won't grow on it? I didn't know I was supposed to mix my substrate with salt water....i was using fresh water. I now know to use the salt water so I sprayed the top layer of substrate with salt water. Anyway, a few of my crabs didn't mind...they just crawled behind a log and went back to sleep, but a couple are stressing out crawling everywhere not satisfied. I have one molter, so I'm afraid to do much of anything in there at the moment.

Mold ussually grows in areas of high humidity, what is yours at? If you continually mist everything and not give it time to dry it would also mold it. I would suggest misting your tank with salt water (many people said this prevents mold). Although I don't know how you could treat it, it would only make sense to me that if it grows in high humidity places you could just microwave it to drain the water from it and to kill the mold then scrap it off and boil it in salt water.Edit: quote: Do crabs need a shelter like a coco hut? Or can you use plants and wood to create dark places for them to hide? I don't have any coco huts in my tank ( i use to) but when I did they never went in it. From observations they seem pretty safe and relaxed hanging from plants or hiding in moss and behind such peices of wood or burying under them.

What happened is i had a screen lid that i put saran wrap on and left about 20% open. Then I bought a lighted hood and even with leaving the front little door open, my humidity was always 90%. With the screened lid, it was at 80%. So I put the screened lid back on today. There was no mold in the substrate, just on the shelters I had. There was also no mold on my driftwood, so I was able to leave that in there.So what should I do when I get the new coco hut? boil it in salt water before i use it? The ones I had they never went in them, just hid behind them.

Yeah you can boil it in salt water. As long as your humidity doesn't get much higher then 80% I don't see you having a problem with mold anyways.