HCA: Hermit Crab Association

I have often played with the idea of a Viquarium. Is anybody doing this? Did you use the Tetra Fauna Viquarium kit?I read somewhere that if you do this you never have to change the sub. It looks to me like the way it works is the water cycles through the sand, which works as a filter. Wouldn't the sand get too wet? Maybe this kind of Viquarium is not possible for hermies?If not, is there a way to do it?

I would have to say if water is cycling through the sand the way I'm thinking it does, then it will drown buried crabs.I have never heard of this. I will have to look into it.

i watched the video on the actual tetra fauna site i love the idea, but for me would be smaller (by far molting area) and to much water area but super neat. also was afraid of the to "wet" and not sure of my rollie pollys. i did think about it when i upgraded for the third time. it mayb alot closer to real than what we r currently offering. interested in knowing if anyone is using this too. just was a shortage of room ,top,molting ,salt-water....hidey

Here's a vivarium but they don't have the water circulating through the sand. This would actually probably work better than the Tetra Fauna one anyway...http://www.flickr.com/photos/n...8255/in/photostream/

Hermitcrabs wouldn't do well with the water continually passing through the substrate as this would cause the sub to stay too wet and would hinder the molting process and boost bacterial and fungal growth deep within the sub.In the wild hermitcrabs typically stay away from the waters edge when molting preferring to dig down right near the edge of the beach and even under the trees that line the shore as the soil/sand is still damp but does not constantly get dowsed with water making the molting pockets drier and less likely to cave in from over saturation that occurs right at the waters edge.

For a long time I was trying to figure out how to build a stream in my tank, have it go down to a layer of mesh and aquaballs and get filtered and flow back into the stream via a waterfall.probably look really cool for a while. But they're right, it probably will keep the substrate too moist. The water quality should be good as it won't pool and stagnate at the bottom since it will be properly filtered. But I've had some experiences with spans of bad molts due to too saturated substrate so I wouldn't do that again.

Alrighty the vote is in. Cycling the water will never work! I guess if I go with a large saltwater pool I will have to stick with the kind that keeps the water separate.