Post
by DragonsFly » Mon May 16, 2016 9:15 pm
It's very easy to make both pools bubble pools, all you need is a T connector (in addition to the air pump, air tubing, and bubble stones you would need to make just one). I think the T connector is like a 50 cent item.
And yes, it would definitely give them plenty of fresh air. You can get a sense for how much air is flowing by holding the end of the air tubing near your face while the pump is running, before putting on the air stone. For the very reason that CO2 tends to sink, it is definitely better, I think, in terms of air exchange, to run air actively into the tank at substrate level than simply leaving a lid propped open a bit without anything driving air movement. I too am on the "paranoid" side about air exchange, so I don't keep any tank--not even an iso--without bubble pools running fresh air in at substrate level. Where I live, though, it is only super-dry in the house during the winter. I do have the pump on a timer so it does not run all the time; I would definitely recommend that to you as well, since apparently if your household air is extremely dry, passing briefly through the water may not be enough to hydrate it, especially if it is running constantly. However, deeper pools should definitely help in that regard (which is why I asked how deep your pools were).
As for whether it is better in the fresh or MSW pool, if you can only do one, I think I would try the MSW pool first, actually. Salt "wants" to maintain 75% humidity, so if you can recreate the kind of "salt air" that naturally occurs near the ocean, that should be helpful in general. If your pool was really shallow such that the bubbler was actively spitting out a good bit of water out of the pool, this might result (over a long time) in a relative build-up of salt in the substrate right around the bubble pool--but the worst-case scenario there would be to just remove the top inch or two of substrate in that area every year or so and replace it with unsalted substrate. Probably, with pool depth of over 3 inches, unless the pump is a really strong one, that shouldn't be much of an issue.
Finally, the more I think about it, the more I think you really do need to calibrate your humidity gauge and/or get two or three others to compare (always a good idea even if there aren't squirrelly humidity issues). I could not see the picture, and don't know how big your tank is, but if your fogger is supposed to be keeping 85% humidity, but your substrate is drying out, then something is off. Maybe it is reading only the most humid place in the tank? Maybe it isn't big enough to really "fog" the entire tank (in which case adding bubblers--or a fountain, which is even better for upping humidity but won't have the advantage of bringing fresh air in so you can close the lid) is probably your next good move. Either way, I think it's probably essential that you literally close the lid. So figuring out a way to pump in fresh, humidified air at substrate level so that you can close the lid entirely and keep as much as possible of the humidity in the tank is definitely on the "to do" list. . .
Let us know how it goes; I'm really interested in the solution to this puzzle, since keeping crabs in the desert has to be one of the biggest challenges of crab-keeping. . .
--{}: Dragons Fly Farm --{}:
Resident PP's:"Major Tom" & "Billie Jean"
“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.”
― G.K. Chesterton
. I'll be leaving the lid cracked tonight so that they still have airflow, but I put the barely bubbly bubbler in to let them acclimate to the new thing and to maybe help a little tonight.