Rough couple weeks at the 'tat!

[Careyenz]

Two weeks ago, I decided to rework my Crabitat. My plants are getting pretty rough looking, so I removed most of them and just rearranged.
This is what I ended up with.


I noticed the substrate was pretty wet. I haven't deep cleaned in well over a year and my EE had really broken down. I uncovered some really nice caves, though and assumed all was well.

Until the next week...
I found puddles actually lying on top of my substrate. Digging down even an inch was totally saturated. I guess I had just reached a critical level with my high humidity and substrate that wouldn't absorb any longer. I bought 3 bricks of EE and a bag of loose EE and finally got it back under control. What a disaster. I pulled everything out and gave them a quick boil and time to thoroughly dry out.



This is what we sadly look like today. You can see the bricks that have almost totally expanded from the water. And I'd like to point out, I *don't* spray and I have ventilation and fresh air pumped into the tank.

Tomorrow I'm going to rebuild. I just wanted to share this because the flooding happened so fast!

[kuza]

do you run water dish bubblers non stop? The splash from those builds up quickly.

[hermieluv1]

I had flooding issues in my first tank so put in the false bottom and it hasn't happened since. All the excess drains down into the false bottom.

Gorgeous blue crab you have! They are all big and beautiful!

[Careyenz]

I do run the bubblers non stop, but the air flow is dampened so I minimize the bubbles. I think what happened is that I bought new stones so the bubbles were stronger and it made a bigger splash. That coupled with the breakdown of EE made a disgusting mess.

[kuza]

I found putting them on a timer helped me a lot. It runs for 30 min on, 30 min off. It gives the crabs a bit of a break and the water doesn't have too much time to sit between cycles. This also give the sand around the pools time to evaporate a bit and keep a good medium level of saturation.

[Careyenz]

I woke up this morning to something really awful. One of my blues was unshelled in the salt water pool dead. I worried last week because he moved into a smaller shell, similar situation to the first blue I lost. I'm down to three. Two buried under today. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for healthy molts.

I reworked my tat. I think it's much improved over last weekend's soggy mess. I'm still not quite done, but good enough for now.


The added loose EE is still pretty fluffy and is on the drier side. This is still by design. I'm hoping as the crabs continue to churn through my substrate, it will continue to mix with the still too wet sub underneath. The EE bricks really helped with the ponding, but I would feel better if it was still a little drier. The crabs seem to be enjoying digging through it as well. I don't want to disrupt the main substrate too much because I still have molters down- my straws will eventually take care of it for me!

[kuza]

I don't think I have any blues left, the last one has been down for months.

[Careyenz]

Kuza, that's awful. I've really enjoyed mine, but I am afraid they are just really fragile. I do think I saw one of those long clear stringy worms that you had in my salt water pool the other day. I'm hoping it was isolated, but I doubt it.