I guess its offical... an upgrade?

[Motörcrab]

That is looking awesome! It came a long way in the last few weeks compared to the last few months! I know what it's like getting into a fun project or something you like doing. You plan to work on it an hour or two, six hours later you forgot you had had other plans and are now running two hours late!

I thought when you silicone walls in for pool they end up leaking over time. Or is that only when you use plexiglass and glass together?

[aussieJJDude]

It tends to be really with silicone and plastics (plexiglass), and can happen similar with new silicone to older silicone...

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[angelbearpuppy]

Wow. It is coming together nice. You should be proud of all the work. Although i admit I am a little me envious. XD not really. I am happy for you and your crabs. And so favoriting this so I can try something similar one day.

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[RiNiKy506]

There’s so much to the filtering and all that goes along with it, I don’t think I’d ever be good at it. Your crabitat continues to look amazing! This is your first attempt!?


Rod♡Salty♡Bob♡Squirt♡Crabina♡Who
»-♡-> Our Purple Pinchers <-♡-«

[Overmountain1]

That is incredible! It’s your own little slice of jungle/tropical forest! You’ve done an incredible job, and I’m sure you’ll find a great way to disguise the wires- you always do! Superb- you should go into business building them out for people- whether for crabs or whatever else! Awesome.


Dave the Wondercrab~Patpat the Scaredy Cat~MaggieMoo-Dumbo~Billy

[aussieJJDude]

Thanks guys!

Envy would of happened to the best of us, I am pretty sure that if the roles were reversed I'd be just as envious!

Haha, the building business would be really fun, but trust me when i say this, there's many others out there that would make my puny build look like a 3 year old did it... What they create are simply masterpieces!

And yes, first attempt. A good couple of months (probably closer to years... but months sounds a little less crazy) of researching every possible way of making a 3D background for hermit crabs to work. I am confident that it will at least hold up to the crabs and humidity (Most materials used should do fine in high humidity); but my concern really is the heat, which can lead to issues...

[Motörcrab]

How do you think the insulation will work with your UTH on the back or are you using a different method? I'm sure you mentioned it back a few pages before.

I drive my wife nuts when I start on researching things. One you tube tutorial for me isn't enough I need to watch several, then try and find other information at yet another place or two. That's how we found the HCA! The more we read the more we changed and tweaked things. Somehow those original 4-5 crabs in a 20 tall turned in 30 in 4 tanks!

The whole tank business would be super cool to do. I can't see all that many people standing in line to shell out $150-$200 plus labor for one of us to set up a 20 gallon tank very often.

I still remember when I though building roller coasters was fun and cool job. Then after you get shipped all over, get detained at airports, not speak the language, and get sick from eating different foods several times it's not much fun. I'd much rather ride them now instead!

[aussieJJDude]

How do you think the insulation will work with your UTH on the back or are you using a different method? I'm sure you mentioned it back a few pages before

With UTH, there's a strong chance that the heat simply would not pass through the layer of foam. Maybe with a heat cable embedded into the foam - and then covered in concrete - it may work well enough and radiate enough heat off of it, like a glorified hot rock - plus the foam would also help insulate the tank as well.


But yes. You're correct. Not using a UTH - shocker! Using a ceramic heat emitter - CHE - due to not a lot of sizes of UTH being available in Auz - by the time I buy enough UTH to cover the back, there goes a couple of sockets, more expensive and higher wattage than a CHE.... not really worth it for me.

Plus for aussies, they really do enjoy basking. I noticed a similar trend in the wild, they do seem to seek out protected areas to bathe in the sun.

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[ciaraalston]

Aussie...... I'm speechless! This build is coming together man! I'm so happy for you!!!

The real plants you've added, what type of care and upkeep is involved? I saw a tank online somewhere that I fell in love with, and I wanted to cover my upgrade in some moss, but I wasn't sure how to make it grow. I've got a moss ball that I shredded up and tied around a log in my fish tank a few months ago, so far it's still doing alright. But I want this 80 gallon to have lots of natural moss growing along the oak branches and grape branches I'm adding. What you think?

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[aussieJJDude]

Aussie...... I'm speechless! This build is coming together man! I'm so happy for you!!!

The real plants you've added, what type of care and upkeep is involved? I saw a tank online somewhere that I fell in love with, and I wanted to cover my upgrade in some moss, but I wasn't sure how to make it grow. I've got a moss ball that I shredded up and tied around a log in my fish tank a few months ago, so far it's still doing alright. But I want this 80 gallon to have lots of natural moss growing along the oak branches and grape branches I'm adding. What you think?

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Thank you!

As for the plants, upkeep will be rather simple IMO. Im planning to spray the plants in water every couple of days (1-2) to ensure that they stay moist until they established, and if they do establish cutting back on watering to around every 3-4 days, or try to stretch it to every week.

Every couple of weeks, a small amount of fish tank fertilizers will be used - these are dry ferts, mainly using a micro mix (Fe, Co, Cu, Zn, Mg ect), Macro mix (KNO3, KH2PO4) heavily diluted to ensure that they are deceiving sufficient nutrients for optimal health - and hopefully growth.


For moss growth, the most important thing is that it stays moist. If it dries out, it can die back - or completely die off - and is a pain to get moss spores to develop. Any type of lighting is fine, even natural light as they do tend to prefer subdued lighting - helps to retain moisture.

Some good mosses that would suit would be sphagnum moss - also the 'bagged sphagnum' found in hardware stores are good to retain moisture for other plants/mosses to grow! - or some of the mosses commonly used in aquariums - such as java moss and Christmas moss would also work rather well.

Mosses can be pretty tricky to grow in terrariums especially when they are first introduced. But once established, they do rather well and meant to be rather easy to grow.

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[aussieJJDude]

Im happy to report, the build is over... well, now the crabs are inside.

A bit of a negative to start off, I thought I had around 6 crabs - one of the straws has been MIA - and today its confirmed. I lost one of the aussies and one of the straws, which I believe is a bad moult and the other looks like cannibalism. I'm a little bummed, but unfortunately not much I can do and hopefully the new tank will have something the tote lacks.


The sand I used. I used just under 20kg - sorry, no imperialist scales - of fine coral sand, (some went into my fish tanks for gH boost, as well as the SW pool)


I also have around 15kg of coral rubble. This is used as a snack, to create a suitable digging medium, add some texture to the sand, and help give the crabs 'caves' to hide in.

Adding the sand/rubble.


(Also added a couple of kg of their current substrate to seed the new sand of beneficial bacteria)

Aaand then fast forward a bit, tank is done. Added some palms to give it a nice cliché beachy touch. I'm a simply guy, I see palms and I see beach....


And the SW pool. Added around a kg of live rock. Its amazing, already seen a couple of 'hitchhickers' such as bristleworms and copepods...


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[RiNiKy506]

So awesome! You should be very proud of yourself, you did an amazing job! I’m so sorry you lost two of them.


Rod♡Salty♡Bob♡Squirt♡Crabina
»-♡-> Our Purple Pinchers <-♡-«
Who♡Fearless♡Crimson♡LittleBit

[angelbearpuppy]

Simply breathtaking such an awsome job. Now comes the fun part where you and the crabs get to enjoy it

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[aussieJJDude]

Thank you guys!

The good news is at least the crabs do enjoy the background! The ones that didn't bury, have climbed through the tunnel as well as gone up to the hide and really enjoy hanging out on the levels.

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[Motörcrab]

Wow! That's insane! That turned out fan-freakin-tastic! Those water pools are incredible! I wish I knew more about creating balanced water ecosystems to keep everything in check. I'm sure that would take several months of quality research to attempt.

That set up is amazing I'm sure your crew will love it! It's unfortunate some of them did not get the chance to see it. I'm sure that was not any of your doing by any means.