HCA: Hermit Crab Association

Hello All! I am a brand new Hermit Crab owner who is just beginning to set my tank up before I go out next week to fetch me four new little friends. I have done extensive research and am fairly knowledgeable in Hermit crab "stuff", so I am taking every precaution in order to prolong the life of my future hermies. I just have two questions: I recently purchased suction cups to be able to stick fake plants to my terrarium wall, however at the ends of these suction cups are small metal hooks. I am aware our little friends are highly reactive to metal, but will adding such a small amount of metal really effect them? If so, and you are familiar with these types of suction cups, what alternative do I have to attaching plants to my tank? Also, when I put my salt water pool (20 o.z. or .6 L) into my crabitat, will the water in the salt water evaporate or is the climate too humid for it to matter? If evaporation does occur, aside from the hermies using the water, is it ok for salt to crust? Personally I think the tank is too humid, but I'm not sure... I am also planning to plop an airstone in both my fresh water and slat water pools: are airstones ok with salt water?Thank you guys for taking the time to read these questions and answer them I appreciate the help.-Aquos

To answer your question about the metal hooks that all really depends on the metal and what it has been coated with, anything thats meant to go into a shower is going to coated to prevent the metal from rusting.Stainless steel typically gets coated with a chemical called chromium(anything chromed as been dipped in this)to prevent rusting and to also make the metal non-stick as in the case of stainless steel pots and pans.Chromium is highly toxic to hermitcrabs not to mention us so stainless steel is out.Hermitcrabs are sensitive to heavy metals like copper and lead and because these are metals that are easily dissolved in water they tend to leech into the tap water we drink directly from our pipes.JMT or Jedi Master Thrash did a lot of research on this a while back and found that rust isn't toxic to hermitcrabs or any other crustacean if it was then the battle ships that get sunk each year to make artificial reefs would kill off thousands of invertebrates but they don't.Not all metal is harmful to hermitcrabs its a myth that they are sensitive to all metals when in reality its only a small handful of metal alloys that pose a risk.Cadmium, Nickel, Arsenic, Mercury and Chromium are all seriously toxic heavy metals and most are found in our tap water in negligible amounts but what may be a small amount to us is amplified by the small size of the hermitcrabs body by volume in comparison to ours.As for the salt water yes its going to evaporate and as it does your going to want to replace the evaporated water with fresh water, as the salt water evaporates a lot of salt is going to get left behind so if your topping the dish off with more salt water your actually increasing the salinity to a point that it can become toxic so for this reason you'll only want to top the water off with fresh water to maintain the salinity.Salt water evaporates at twice the rate of fresh water so most of us use larger dishes for our salt water than our fresh to combat this.

Thank you so much for the quick and detailed response! I will heed your info: ) -Aquos

Anytime, its what I'm here for.

Air stones are safe to use in salt water, but, personally,, I wouldn't recommend it. The bubbles in salt water are much finer than in fresh water, due to salt water's higher density. The resulting spray will cause salt to encrust everything near the salt water pool. If not kept in check, this can cause the substrate to become too salty, not to mention the unsightly mess the salt will make.

I use an air stone in my salt water pool and haven't had much of an issue with the salt spray coating anything accept the glass wall directly behind the dish.I have a mix of Ecuadorians which are exotics from South America and PP's which are our domestic species so the air stone in the salt water is a little more necessary because they don't particularly like drinking from stagnant or standing water it helps to encourage them to use the pool if the water is moving in some manner.