Advice on correcting mistakes in crabitat set up

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Hi my 11 year old son just started with hermit crabs and we have made mistakes and lost 2 crabs through our own ignorance and bad pet shop advice. He did everything he was told by the pet shop - none of the advice was even close to right, and was very upset when the first 2 crabs passed.

As a result we are working very hard not to loose any more crabs and have moved from a plastic container with colored sand a a half inch of substrate to a 20 G tank which we had set up using a book we bought from Amazon. Now I have spent some time reading care sheets I now realized we made mistakes with our set up and crab care, and need advice.

He now has 5 crabs ranging from half an inch to 2 inches, the smallest we have now found out is an E and the rest PP. All except the larger PP have swapped shells and been buried now for 3 weeks. Prior to disappearing they roamed and ate - devouring the inside of a hollow cork round and a chunk from a piece of of coral we had from a trip to australia, then buried themselves in a variety of places. I am guessing they are stressed, or molting?

Here is list of mistakes we made, I am hoping to get advice on what to do next:

We used API freshwater salt given to us by the store when we bought the crabs to set up the tank, we chlorinated first but have used it exclusively as salt water including soaking the substrate, setting up the water bath and subsequent changes over the past 4 weeks. We used cocofibre and play sand 70/30 and the consistency seems OK and we have graded 4 to 6 inches in depth, but the entire substrate was lightly soaked in the wrong salt GRRRRR. I now have Instant Ocean coming from Amazon and have increased the size of the bath.

We have dug up the crabs twice to clean the crabitat and bath them - apparently following advice from the book, my fault letting my son read sections of the book, without me reading the whole thing.

We also did not realize the heating pad we were sold that was under the tank was not heating it enough, the analog temp gauge was 8 degrees off - so we have been at around 70 heat and the humidity 10% high so has been as high as 95% as my son was misting a lot to look after the crabs.The mosss we added went moldy so we removed it and replaced with new.

We have made a lot of changes having read the advice on the site. I think our tank is now in decent shape with a digital therm/humidity gauge, we swapped the reptile under tank pad for a UHT 6x23 pad on the back, and added a bubble maker in the freshwater bath to help humidity.we have a perspex lid i cut and drilled holes in and a good supply of shells.

My main question is what should i do about the following:
Will the crabs be OK having been at a lower temp for 2 weeks, and then disturbed by us to bath them. After digging them up they did look OK and walked about in the (wrong) salt water for 10 mins before we put them back and they reburied themselves.

We rearranged the tank not knowing where the crabs are buried, and now have larger water baths/dishes, and a new cholla log potentially covering them up - I am concerned they will not be able to dig themselves out?

Should I check the crabs and swap out the substrate at some point to soak it Instant Ocean salt water, not the API stuff?

sorry for the rambling post, and thanks in advance for any advice.

[TheLilMommaB]

I did the exact same thing using aquarium salt for my substrate someone here told me it wont hurt them since the only real difference is that it is only salt and none of the other minerals that ocean salt has as for them being able to dig back up after moving things around...they will be fine they'll find a new way out if they run into something or they'll move it I can't be much more help as I'm a newbie myself so I'm sure I'm making some mistakes too welcome to the friendliest place on the Internet

[wodesorel]

I think you caught all the problems in time.

That they're buried is a good sign and with luck they'll be molted and above ground in a few more weeks. The biggest risk of digging up a crab is catching it mid-molt when it's soft and vulnerable, or catching it right before it molts when it's defenseless against other crabs or doesn't have the strength to rebury so it surface molts. With new crabs there's also the added factor of extra stress, which can sometimes be the tipping point after already going through so much, but that's not something we have control over and we can only wait and see what happens.

The API salt is not harmful, but it's not nearly as beneficial as Instant Ocean. Real sea water is made up of around 70 elements - the marine replacement salt mimics this, while freshwater salt is mostly sodium chloride.

The temperature is a bit worrisome, as lower temps can add to Post-Purchase Syndrome issues. If they get through that first molt with you they'll be in the clear. PPs don't have higher temperature requirements like some exotics, but they generally do poorly under 75 degrees. The higher humidity is not an issue aside from the mold growth that you ran into.

So long as the substrate is deep enough, they will dig around any obstacles. They never dig straight down, instead tunneling off to the sides or making giant loops of the tank while underground. They're looking for an out of the way place to hide until they're molted and safe from other hermit crabs. When they dig up they'll also come up at an angle, and if they run into anything they just keep digging until they find a clear spot to surface. So long as the whole surface isn't covered by hard things, they'll be fine!

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Thanks both for the speedy response and advice. Will keep a close eye on the temperature and hope to see signs of the buried crabs digging out soon. Will post update as events unfold,

any additional comments gratefully received!

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Quick update, after 6 weeks all the crabs have come back up and are exploring. Thanks again for the advice.