HCA: Hermit Crab Association

Can sand mold? How likely is mold when you have a mixed substrate(ie. sand and cocohusk type stuff like EE)?

I also found a gardening sand that I really like, but I'm not sure it's suitable. If play sand is, why wouldn't this be? It's made by MosserLee and it's a soil cover. I also looked at the playsand at HomeDepot and it's wayyyy fine and funny looking to me. Then the allpurpose sand is way to gritty and I'm afraid the little rocks will hurt the crabs... But! This garden sand is awesome. I just don't know if it's awesome for crabs!

Also, what's a really good *undyed* moss that isn't like patches, but can be seperated?

Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I'm quite frustrated because I keep getting mixed info from a million different sources. :/

I don't think that it is the sand that molds but possibly whatever is being mixed with the sand or food that has gotten dragged around. I only had a small mold problem once on the coco mat climbing background, and that was resolved by boiling in salt water. I now only mix my sand and coco fiber with salt water to initially moisten it and that seems to prevent mold growth. As far as the sand goes as long as there are no pesticides or other chemical additives in the sand I don't think it will be a problem. I will check the brand of moss that I am using and post it later, I can't recall the name but I bought it from the crabbage patch.

Another thing that will help a lot is if you use the instructions here:

http://www.hermitcrabassociation.com/pa ... rates.html

and bake the sand before you add it to the tanks.

This will ensure anything that might be growing in it is killed off.

Thank you Kano and Chompman! My boy didn't know to use a salt water solution for the EE, so that's probably one of our issues.

I was thinking about baking the EE I have now and reusing it, but that's not good yeah? So, none of that. I'll just buy more! I'll bake my wood though and make sure I'll bake any other substrate I get and use *salt* water. heh.

I really appreciate the help.

Well you can bake the EE but with how much use it gets between the deep cleans and how cheap it is I just toss most of the old substrate out and keep a small amount to mix on top with the new stuff so it doesn't stress them out to much like it can if it's all new.