petsitting while in hawaii

crazycrabber · Post by **crazycrabber** » Sun Jun 29, 2014 9:00 am

so i am going on a vacation on the 4th, and i only have one person who can take care of my crabs while i am gone. the only problem is that he is leaving on the 3rd, and coming back on the sixth. he also has crabs, and he doesn't know who would be able to take care of his but me. so we made a plan to put our crabs in his very humid bathroom, and we would spritz our cages until they got a little swampy, then i would put a cloth on mine to really keep in the humidity, then i would put something heavy on top, so they wouldn't try to escape, because of the unpleasant swampiness. i would feed them before i drop them off, clean their shells, water bowls, other things. also his bathroom doesn't have air conditioning, so it would be a nice temp for them hopefully. he would take a shower right before he left, and shut the door to keep the humidity in, even better. and i would before that stay a few hours, so i could make sure that it isn't too hot, with the heater and no air conditioning. although my house has too much air conditioning, pulling down the temp a little too much. also it would be dark, maybe it would tempt them to molt, in that case when he gets back on the sixth, only two days later, he can put the one who isn't molting in with his, so he isn't lonely. sound good? i am very scared to leave them there, and have them be alone for 2 and a half days, so if it isn't good enough, then please give me advice on how to do better. i will do anything for them, all the prep i wrote above, and more, anything for those precious things to make it until he gets back two days later, and then when i pick them up.

crazycrabber · Post by **crazycrabber** » Sun Jun 29, 2014 9:02 am

also if he doesn't spritz for 2 and a half days, then the swampiness will be gone, it is only to keep up the good humidity.

Crabber85 · Post by **Crabber85** » Sun Jun 29, 2014 11:10 am

Two days is a cinch compared to being gone a whole week like I normally do for a vacation.Because I'm gone so long and I have such a large enclosure I have to have somebody come over whom I trust to tend to them keeping the water dishes filled and the food changed out on an every other day basis.I wouldn't worry to much over two days with no supervision though the only problem I can see is the possibility of them getting overheated as there is no air conditioner vent in the room which might lead to a temp spike in the enclosure with the heat pad on it.My question here is how many watts is the heater and do you know what the average temp of his bathroom is?I'd at least get him to do some temp readings three or four times a day for the next four day with a basic thermometer and chart that down you then should get a good idea as to whether a heat pad will really be necessary.You definitely don't want to oversaturate the enclosures because that could lead to flooding of the substrate very easily and could result in increased mold growth and could potentially kill any burrowed or molting hermits.

crazycrabber · Post by **crazycrabber** » Sun Jun 29, 2014 11:55 am

thanks for your advice! i will ask him to do that.

jenok · Post by **jenok** » Thu Jul 03, 2014 7:49 am

I agree do not oversaturate your tanks it will cause more trouble in the long run than its worth. You'll stress the crabs as much if not more than having a little less humidity for a couple days. The humidity may or may not slowly decrease over a couple days whereas your planning on quickly increasing it. On a side note if your tanks are losing humidity that fast there is something else not right cuz my 10g holds humidity by itself without me spraying or adding water for over a week.