HCA: Hermit Crab Association

I have owned one hermit crab for 15 years, and another newly adopted. Traditionally I have always used pet store Natural Calcium sand mixed with eco earth (one part sand, two parts eco earth), I never had any issues as both crabs were very active and enjoyed digging in their substrate as equally as they loved to climb. As I have read on this site and many others upon further research, the Calci Sand is dangerous. With this I decided to change out their substrate a week ago and used the recommended Quikrete All purpose Premium Play Sand mixed with Eco Earth. Since then, neither of my crabs will touch their substrate. It has been a full week now and they sleep all day in in the netting I have hung up at the top their tanks and do not appear to move much at all, their food and water have been untouched for days.
What do you think I should do? Keep the substrate as it is and hope they get used to the new play sand mix or go back to using the Calcium sand mix?
I don't want to use sand that will hurt my crabs, but it seems like the Quikrete isn't improving their situation, currently causing more harm than good.

Oh my gosh if you've had them 15 years then you know more than we do! The people who came up with the 5:1 blend have had their crabs for half of the time you have.

Calcium sand by itself really is dangerous as they cannot molt in it. Many OG crabbers have always used the EE with a bit of calcium sand mixed in, even to this day. The EE blends out the calcium sand and it doesn't cause problems.

It is very hard to convince new crabbers that this mix is okay. To them, everything old school is too old and out of date and dangerous. They never stop to think that if it's been working perfectly for 15, 20, 25 years that there is no reason to change it. I think like most things, people believe newer is always better.

That said, you can probably leave it and your crabs will adjust with a little more time. Sudden substrate changes can really mess with them in some cases and they sort of revolt. Usually within a month they settle down and are back to normal.

The same thing is happening to me! I have 4 crabbies in a 39 gallon with a playsand:coconut fiber mix substrate, 7 inches deep too. i used to use just coco fiber, but now i just started adding playsand and they won't touch it. they have acted like this for a week so far and i don't know what i should do. they are just sitting on top of their hides and plants, avoiding the substrate. they only come down to eat and drink and play on their wheel.
edit: ive had one of these crabs for almost 5 years, and the others ive had for 3 years. they were on coco fiber for all those years. i just changed it to a mix of playsand and coco

I mixed my original batch of substrate using calci-sand and EE in a 50:50 ratio. This was circa 2008. I got reamed on crab keeping forums. Eventually I capitulated and added play sand and more EE to "dilute" the bad stuff. I've never completely tossed any substrate, I just keep adding to it for bigger tanks and more tanks. They original "killer death sand" is still in all of my tanks in very dilute amounts.

Hi, I am new to hermit crab and came upon your discussion from google search.
I mix 5:1 plays sand from Home Depot and eco earth, and our new hermit Is trying to avoid it a much as possible. he was fine on hermit crab sand(cal sand, I read it is bad).
I was wondering have of you find a solution with it? Thank you

Flash2022 wrote: ↑

Mon Jul 25, 2022 7:47 pm

Hi, I am new to hermit crab and came upon your discussion from google search.
I mix 5:1 plays sand from Home Depot and eco earth, and our new hermit Is trying to avoid it a much as possible. he was fine on hermit crab sand(cal sand, I read it is bad).
I was wondering have of you find a solution with it? Thank you

The problem with calcium sand is that it turns to cement when wet, so crabs can't make tunnels and molt safely. How long ago did you change it for the sand and EE mix? It could just take them some more time to get used to it.

Same thing happened to me. I’m going to switch back to just coconut fiber because I haven’t seen them dig down in a while. Also, they never used to surface sleep and now that’s all they do!!!