De-chlorinating Water?

[HermitCrab98]

Hello! I am planning on getting two hermit crabs tomorrow. I have a 20 gallon long tank that I will put them into. I am going to use two 50 lb bags of Quikrete play sand and 1 brick of Eco Earth. I have some climbing things to use and some hides as well. I plan on using Instant Ocean for the salt water, and for the freshwater, I was wondering if bottled water would be okay for them? I have stress coat water conditioner that I use for my fish tank, and I've heard mixed reviews on using that to de-chlorinate the water. Anyways, what do you guys do to de-chlorinate your water?

[megmaholm]

You can use bottled water but I would dechlorinate it just to be safe. I think a lot of crabbers buy a one gallon jug of spring water for around $1, dechlorinate it, and use it; then once it's gone, you can just keep refilling it with tap water and treating it. Cheap and easy! I actually keep 2 jugs, one for fresh and one for saltwater.

I use this dechlorinator: http://www.petsmart.com/fish/dechlorina ... tid-300031 It's super concentrated and only takes one drop per gallon, so it's easy to mix up. I don't think one brand is necessarily better than any others, as long as it removes heavy metals, chlorines, etc.

[HermitCrab98]

So stress coat should be okay? It removes all the harmful things in water, but I was wondering if the chemicals that made it "stress" relieving would hurt the crabs.

[megmaholm]

Whoops, I meant to link this about Stress Coat: It's an interesting read. http://hermitcrabassociation.com/phpBB/ ... 79#p770479 Looks like her conclusion is that it isn't harmful, so I wouldn't worry about using it.

[HermitCrab98]

Thank you so much for that link! It will really help me rest assured that it won't hurt them. But knowing how weird I am about things like this, I am going to go out and buy one that I know is safe. Lol. Yay for OCD!