Expanding my 40B tank vertically

[Tmomma]

Yeah my Flickr account isn't giving me the option to copy the bbcode for some reason.. not sure if it's because I'm using my phone.. that's why I just figured people could open them with url

[Jlmills525]

I didn't see a URL in your post, but i followed from AussieJJ's and if that's your pics... man that's amazing!

[Tmomma]

Yeah that's it thanks! Thanks to AussieJJ for posting the URL lol! Only 3 of my 7 crabbies are up so I can't wait to see how excited the other ones are.. you know as excited as crabs can show us.

[aussieJJDude]

Yeah my Flickr account isn't giving me the option to copy the bbcode for some reason.. not sure if it's because I'm using my phone.. that's why I just figured people could open them with url

Ah, maybe thats why! I had similar issues with flickr when on my phone!

[hermit_crab_mommy]

I had my 55g for years and never changed the substrate. I had live plants in it, so that would have been particularly annoying to do. With enough substrate, and with a mix of Eco Earth and sand, and especially if you have good diggers that stir the soil up fairly regularly, theoretically it can become bioactive and balanced. I'm with those who say don't change the sub unless you get a bacterial bloom or other problem. (But I only have 2 crabs, in a 120 g; if you had more crabs in a smaller volume of substrate, it might be that waste products would build up?)

I think I saw something where somebody took the double-door arrangement and put a strip of plexiglas on the back of one of the doors to overlap behind the gap and across to the back of the other door while still allowing the doors to open. In other words, the strip was about 2 1/2 inches wide, and was only glued to the back of ONE of the doors, but it overlapped BOTH doors about an inch on each side of the gap. But because it was only glued to one door, you could still open the doors as long as you opened the one the plexi was not attached to, first. Does that make any sense? I'm sorry I have no idea how to find that, I'm sure it would have had pictures that would help.

I did not find a fogger to be much help at all with humidity, while it did encourage mold. I think that is because it rolls out all this cool fog that just settles on things and keeps all the SURFACES actively MOIST, thus making mold happy, rather than staying in the AIR, which is where we need it in a crabitat, to keep the CRABS healthy. The biggest humidity booster I've found is a fountain in the tank. I found an old plastic ("resin"!) table-top decorative fountain with a fairly deep bottom basin at a thrift store. The water fell into one smaller basin about halfway, then down from that smaller basin through several streams into the larger bottom basin. That moving, running water in several streams aerosolized a ton of humidity into the tank.

Live plants, if you can get them growing, also lift water from the substrate and release it into the air.

I know how thrift stores are so I know you might not know this, but what is the fountain? Is it like a reptile fountain or a decorative table top fountain that can be used? Do you know the name or where it’s from or anything similar? If you don’t know thats fine

[DragonsFly]

It is a decorative table top fountain. It doesn't have any tag or brand name on the fountain itself. I also made a fountain once, it wasn't too difficult but the way I made it, it turned out to be harder to clean than I wanted to deal with, so I prefer the thrift store one. When the crabs were small, I had to have a DIY "shield" for the back (made of plexiglas) so they couldn't get in to the back where the pump is; once they got too big to get in there, I quit using that. I've looked since but haven't yet found another one that is as well-designed as this one, with a bottom basin deep enough to be a water source for them, but is still small enough to fit in the crabitat.