HCA: Hermit Crab Association

To preface this I’ll say I’ve never started an aquarium before. I started freshwater and saltwater tanks last week, each 2.5 gallons with filters and bubblers. I used api quick start to introduce bacteria but I’m wondering if they’ve died off since there isn’t as much ammonia being added as would be with fish. My readings in the freshwater all got 0ppm and the ph is neutral at about 7 or 7.2 as the color was hard to match. I’m not sure if I should’ve added something else to the water, and if I can do it while the crabs have access. Let me know please, I’ll appreciate the help. I’m on my way out to buy a saltwater test kit now to see what those readings are like, as well as a gh and kh test kit but I’m not sure they sell those at petco. It looks like they don’t so that may have to wait.


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Not sure what products would be safe/unsafe for crabs. I'm assuming they have access to them now?

When doing a fish-less cycle for an aquarium, you need to add an ammonia source regularly (decaying organic matter, some people use fish food.)
The bottled bacteria can be finicky. Lots of people successfully cycle their tanks without, it just may take longer.
Sometimes ammonia is present even when no reading shows, but maybe the liquid kit you have is more reliable than strips.

They do have access now, but I could put any crabs that are currently up in my other crab tanks for the time being should I need to. I put six I just adopted in the tank with the pools. I haven’t finished the topper to connect them yet.

What would I add at this point while they have access? Like would trying fresh food debris and the quick start bacteria make sense?


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Hopefully someone with more experience on how this relates to crabs can chime in!

If the crabs are making a mess in the tanks, then that stuff may be enough to create ammonia. It's basically impossible to overdose on the quick start bacteria, so you can dose it every few days.

As said above, no constant input of nutrients will lead to no readings (particularly nitrates in an established/cycled tank).

Honestly, the crabs dragging in foods/debris will provide the food for the bacteria. As crabs generally dont stay in the water all the time, their infrequent trips will slowly build up bacterial colonies, which nitrifying species take roughly 24 hrs to duplicate in numbers.

Thanks everyone I’ll give it some time and see how any mess added works.

On another note I bought the tetra air pumps for up to 10 gallons but it doesn’t seem able to support both an air stone and the filter. I got one for each tank since one couldn’t support both. But now that it’s one filter and an air stone each the air stones are weak if the filter has air. If I pinch the line to the filter the air stones work great. I thought 10 gallon pump would be good enough for such a small setup but it doesn’t seem to be?


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Do you have values for each of the airlines (to the box filter and airstones?). Air will travel the path of least resistance, so its naturally going to flow to one or the other. An oversized pump will mask this, or valves so you can send the air to each location appropriately.

Thanks [mention]aussieJJDude [/mention] ! I only put one near the pump itself since I was following a YouTube tutorial. I can add some more valves in when I get home tonight.


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