Water temp?

[72mm]

Without getting to anal about the conditions in a tank I guess you could say that it optimally would mimic a natural habitat as close as possible. The ambient temperature, the light (or absence of it), and the humidity I guess one could get control of relatively easy, but what about the temperature of the water?

It struck me that in a typical tank you heat the whole enchilada to whatever temperature you need, say 90F, and then all water in the tank will also get this temperature. This should be a pretty big difference to typical fresh or ocean water in places where you typically have a day-temperature around 90F… Many are concerned about temperature-variations inside their tank, but isn't this a variation that you maybe would want?

Anyone thought about if this unnaturally hot water have any impact on crabs? Good or bad? Unless there are folks out there that are actually cooling their water consider this a hypothetical question.

[Ryry]

So I live up in CT, which means when I make my instant ocean salt water and store it in a big jug- the jug itself become super cold. So no joke I heat a glass of water up in the microwave and then add the cool water to it so it's luke warm/ warm to the touch. My FW is well water with no chemicals (I tested it) so I just run warm water into the FW pool.

I do this for two reasons. The first being that I highly doubt my crabs would want to swim in super cold CT temp water. Lol I sure don't!
The second reason is because if I put cool water in the tat I feel that it has a negative impact on the heat. If you put warm water In the tank the there is not energy wasted in warming up the water. I feel it could potentially cool my tank off (even if it's only a little bit) and I read somewhere that some one used a water heater because her crabs wouldn't go I the pools if it was too cold. I would feel the same! So I keep it warm.

Usually when I change my pool water I notice that it has cooled some over the past day or two while being in the tank.

I didn't do this as much in the summer when temps were easier to hold and were higher, and I notice that the crabs have been using the pools more. So it's my personal opinion that my crabs like warm and not cool water.

I can't really imagine it being and issue, but now you have sparked my interest and I'm curious as to what other people do!

[72mm]

Well, it would be pretty small differences. Not like we are talking about cold water like in cold to the touch, only cool relative the ambient temp in the tat. A few degrees below that or so...

And trying to keep artificial differances in temperature for sure would take more energy. You would constantly have to battle your own cooling because "cooler" water would, as you say, cool the rest of the tat.

[singlemomwithcrab]

So if we are talking hypothetically, the ocean temperatures as high as 80 degrees F are common near the equator. Today's high ocean temp is 89 degrees F and on average near the Crabbies areas range from 70 to 89 degrees F today.

http://www.seatemperature.org/

I doubt that hermits are using fast moving fresh water as their source for FW, so I would assume that they are using rain water and pooled water or spring water. I would think that spring water is the coldest of these but the rain water or pooled water wouldn't be much different in temperature than the ambient air temp.

[wodesorel]

Don't forget about temperature gradients. All tropical animals should be provided with a warm area and a cool area that differs by about 10 degrees so that they can thermoregulate as needed. (Similar to what they would be able to do between standing in the sun or in the shade in the wild.) It can be left to right, top to bottom, front to back, etc. The entire enclosure should not be the same stable temp.

And surface temp of water in the tropics is usually the same as ambient air temps so it's not a worry in a crabitat. Drop a few feet below the surface and it's cooler and more stable, hence the need for chillers for saltwater fish, but that's not something that land hermits crabs would be doing.

[72mm]

Ah, nothing beats worrying about things thats really based on preconcieved notions about the nature of things!

Of course the water temp (surface at least) in the tropics usually are about the same temp as ambient. It's probably just as often a few degrees warmer than air… My only excuse is bad bio-education and being a Swede doesn't help either (the water very rarely match air temp around here, I'm happy if I don't have to bring a ice-axe to the beach )

Good, then that's no problem.

Temperature gradients is more interesting. At the moment I'm running such a small, focused heat-source that I actually don't have that problem, more the opposite, but in the final design I make sure I think in terms of min/max and ambient temp instead of just the "right temp".

Thanx both.

[KellyCrabbieLove]

I just moved my sw pool off the side of the tank with the heater. It was getting warm and they preferred things cold.