please help with lighting

[Bory.Garcia]

-I just purchased my 20g in a kit that bring the lid and 5 mini LED lights that consist of 5 watt can someone please do tell me is that ok?-And if so what time of the day should I have it on and for how long !! I currently have no lighting in my 10 gallons tank and my humidity is like a average of 70-80%

[Crabber85]

The LED lighting should be okay for daytime lighting but you wont get any heat output so a uth pad rated for a 60 gallon tank either side or back mounted with the bottom line just above the substrate should get you the temp you need without zapping your humidity.Hermitcrabs do best with a twelve hour day night cycle so ideally the light needs to come on when the sun comes up and go off when the sun goes down to mimic whats happening outside but because this is not always possible we try to at least achieve as close to a twelve hour day night light cycle as possible for most of us its an average of ten hours of day light and fourteen hours of night.

[Bory.Garcia]

thanks crabber85 appreciated.now I have more questions if you don't mind helping..now is it a bad thing that I am at home when the sun goes down and I keep my room light on since im suppose to turn the lid led light off when the sun goes down?

[Crabber85]

No its not a bad thing, I have my 121 gallon hermitcrab enclosure in my bedroom and I'm autistic so I'm up most of the night so my room light stays on and it hasn't seemed to bother my group after six years. Hermitcrabs kept in captivity are still just as sensitive to the changes that come with the seasons ie less sunlight in the winter and fall and more in the spring and summer even though most spices come from areas that don't have much if any seasonal changes, in fact the only species I can think of that actually experiences cold winters is the Aussie or Austrialian land hermitcrab aka Coenobita Variabilis they actaully come from the area around Perth which is on the West coast and hybernate during the winter months in caves or burrows they litterally sleep the winter away in a manner of speaking as they don't actually hybernate its more of a type of hybernation where they are still semi-awake most reptiles and crustaceans do this they don't actually go fully asleep wild huh?...Anyway getting back to topic, captive hermitcrabs that are kept in areas like any where in North America above Miami, Canda and the UK where they don't natually exist develope a sensory perception of seasonal changes that happen in those areas and they use an internal calendar thats set by these seasonal changes to set molt times and frequencies and even to adjust their activity levels accordingly so you'll see more activity during the warmer months and little to none during the colder ones they typically use the fall and winter to do all of their molting which can account for some of this in-activity on the surface.Artifical lighting like Florescent or Incandescent doesn't fool these little critters unless the bulbs are specifically designed to mimic sunlight like Repti-Sun or Repti-Glo UV-B bulbs because hermitcrabs see in the Ultra-violet range normal artifical lighting is pretty meanigless to them altough due to the nature of how they precieve light we have found that using black light bulbs on their enclosures tends to mess them up because these bulbs only emit a tiny amount of visible light and a lot of UV so the crabs think its daytime all them time when they are in use which has been observed hindering normal nightime behaviors and even interferring with molt patterns.

[Laurie LeAnn]

I love my moon glow light. It's on 24 / 7. My 55 gallon has a split lid so half has a the regular light I turn off at night the other half I leave on all the time. It helps w a little warmth and light. We live around tons of shade trees and get no Sun in our house to have them get natural light even though it's so filtered.