HCA: Hermit Crab Association

Hi! I am back online and recently, Scuttle, my tough guy, has been doing lots of tunnel digging. Last Monday I woke up to mist the tank before I got ready for work, and I couldn't find him! I had been hearing scratching noises all night long and I thought that Scuttle was just very active.

I had checked all the empty shells and the coco hut... until I found an area of the tank that looked like it had been dug up. Now VERY CAREFULLY I moved some of the substrate aside and found a cool tunnel!

Scuttle has never made tunnels in my tank before, and I have a little over 3.5 inches of substrate in my 10 gallon tank. (I have been adding small scoops every few days so that he can get used to the extra stuff easier.)

Over the past week he has filled up the first tunnel, made two more, filled those in, and is now in another tunnel! I cannot tell if he has any other molting signs, but he seems to be enjoying his tunnels.

What I am worried about is that he might not come out of the tunnels, or may get stuck. Since I do not want to dig him out myself, I'm going to leave him alone for now. He has been eating normal amounts of his food and bathing in the salt bath until two days ago. I haven't seen him come out of his tunnel since..

His new tunnel is under the area where the coco hut was. (I moved it to carefully search for Scuttle.)

As long as your substrate is proper consistency, they will be able to both dig down and dig back up. Is he your only crab? Is the substrate at least 2-3 times as deep as your largest crab? If there is more than one crab, be sure that your substrate is deep enough asap. You can add more substrate, just don't pack it down or drop it in from a height.
Also, stop messing around with your crabs when they are underground.

So far, YES, Scuttle is my only crab. Tomorrow I am going out to get 1-2 new small crabs, though!

Yes, the substrate is a little over 2 times deeper than Scuttle.

I am VERY sorry for messing with my crabs. I just wanted to make sure that they were okay and moving. I just recently found another way to check if Scuttle had moved at all. I cleaned out the salt bath, freshwater and food dishes this morning. I came back after going out and I saw that some food had been moved around and saw some sand laying in the bottom of the salt bath, which means Scuttle came out of his little cave.

curlysister wrote: ↑

Sun Feb 04, 2024 2:01 pm

As long as your substrate is proper consistency, they will be able to both dig down and dig back up. Is he your only crab? Is the substrate at least 2-3 times as deep as your largest crab? If there is more than one crab, be sure that your substrate is deep enough asap. You can add more substrate, just don't pack it down or drop it in from a height.
Also, stop messing around with your crabs when they are underground.

Can tunnels collapse if they're too dry? Crab Central Station on Youtube says to put substrate in dry, and that crabs carry enough water in their shells to moisten the substrate enough to dig. I've heard conflicting information from different people though.

LavendarCrab wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 15, 2024 11:15 am

Can tunnels collapse if they're too dry? Crab Central Station on Youtube says to put substrate in dry, and that crabs carry enough water in their shells to moisten the substrate enough to dig. I've heard conflicting information from different people though.

Yes, tunnels can collapse if the substrate is too dry.
There is a whole 'myth' out there that substrate should be put in dry - I can't remember where this started exactly, but it is NOT accurate! Someone some time did not add water to the substrate, and then for some reason it got passed along that sub should go in dry and that the 'moisture' and 'humidity' in the tank would be enough to make the sub moist enough to be proper consistency. The reality is that the person didn't add water because the sand was already wet!
It is really sad that info gets passed along as FACT when people don't know the whole story.

Ok thanks! Glad I know that now! Thankfully I did NOT put my substrate in completely dry, it still had moisture. About how much water should I pour in to keep it the right consistency, and about how often? How much is too much?

How much water you need to add will depend on a lot of things. The more air flow/ venting you have, the more moisture will leave the tank. You can check periodically by shoving a chopstick down along the glass to the bottom - then you can see if the sand caves into the hole, or if it holds it's shape. It's normal for the first inch or so to be drier than further down. And you don't want to add so much water that you have any pooling in the bottom. Sometimes just a bit of misting on the surface is enough, sometimes nothing is needed.