92g Mysterious Shoreline Crabarium (Pics)

[JediMasterThrash]

Click here to view an image gallery of my latest Crabarium iteration:http://home.comcast.net/~JediM...teriou ... ine/Here's two samples: This time I finally decided to move the pools up front so I could use both back walls for second levels. The last time I did something similar was the first iteration with my 92g (before I had the pools).More of the baskets and plants care of Hobby Lobby's 40% off sale from 2 years ago.I decided that my tank wasn't warm enough in the winter. Even though the air and surface temp is still in the 70's to 80's, I thought the back sides and lower substrate might be too cool with the house at 65-68, and only using lights.So I got two 8w under tank heaters to put on the two back sides. I still don't think putting UTH on the bottom is always the best idea, but I figured side-mounting could help a little. Since the sand is pretty deep, still over 3/4ths of the UTH is in contact with substrate.

[JediMasterThrash]

The plants up front are some kind of fake plastic grass thing that came in a clump. I cut all the strands off the clump and then implanted them vertically into the soil around the front. It creates kind of a cool grassy reed look.Right now I'm still back to all-sand. Though I can't say I might not go back to a mix later. My two most successful iterations were with all sand. My sand/ee iterations ended up having some issues, though I can't say it was entirely caused by the EE. The biggest problem though was just the mess. The EE really gucks up the water pools, even with cleaning the filters every week.But I've been having trouble keeping the sand at the correct moisture level, so I may try EE again at some point.2 iterations ago, my sand was way too saturated and caused some weird molting issues. This last time, I overcompensated on the dry side, and found a couple crabs dessicated from trying to molt in sand that becamse too dry. Luckily half the tank was still moist and there was successful molts over there.Including my 6 year old one-eyed crab who was about 4 days post-molt when I dug him up, and is recovering in ISO right now.But in terms of hydrating the substrate, you don't really need access to all the substrate. Any water you add to the substrate will disperse out to the surrounding substrate within a few hours. Usually one finger hole can cover about a square foot of sand with hydration.All the plants and basket are from Hobby Lobby. It's kind of like a Michaels, only 10x better. The bigger box in the middle is some kind of like countertop mail sorter or something. It's laying on its side so you have to imagine it the other way.The big shelf is a locker mate thingy from Target. It fits in a school locker.The smaller ones are mini-cube stackers from Bed Bath & Beyond.I have a duetto 50 3-stage filter in each pool.