Newbie needs thermostat recomendations...

[Herman Coen]

I have lost only one crab, Maynard, I think to an unexpectedly cool night here in Colorado (he got sleepy). Maintaining a stable temp as it gets cooler out has proven to be a real challenge. I have a 10g tat now, and a 55g that I wish to get stable and cultured with old EE. Any suggestions, comments, insights, experience regarding thermostat heat control. I only know of 2 Zoomed models. Would like to be able to transfer up to the large tank in time. I want quality and versatility. Thanks

[Crabber85]

It's highly unlikely that a dip in the temps for one night will do damage to a hermitcrab to the point of causing death unless the temps get down below fifty in the enclosure.While it is true that hermitcrabs are tropical animals some species can tolerate brief exposure to temps between fifty and seventy degrees with minimal effect.PP's or Purple Pinchers one of the two most widely available species on the market in the US live as far north as Miami Fl, and the temps can get as chilly as the low sixties in that area for a very short period of time so the PP has evolved to deal with this short term dip in temp by just simply sitting still.Once the crab has had to time to warm up it will typically return to normal behavior in a day or two.It's far more likely that your passed crab died from PPS or post purchase stress which is a combination of: need for molt, lack of nutrients in the diet and stress from the time it was harvested to the time you/we purchase the crab.The care that these crabs get from the time they are harvested, through the waiting period at the harvesters warehouse and on into the time they spend in store waiting to be purchased is actually low to none this puts an emense amount of stress on the crab which lowers its immune system you add that to the overcrowded conditions they have been in for several months and you get a recipe for bacterial, viral and fungal infections that go un-noticed until the crab passes.PPS can effect the crab until well after its first molt with us as the impact of what it has gone through to get to us lingers for months.The important thing to remember here is that its nothing you have done but what has already been done to the crab prior to you getting it which is beyond our control.This is why we recommend an iso period or hands off time of one month to give the newly purchased crab/s time to acclimate, tank up on nutrients and molt if need be with out being disturbed.The iso method isn't a 100% gaurantee but it does up the chances of survival quite significantly.As for you heating question because uth pads were designed for the shallow depth of dry reptile bedding they don't work as well on hermitcrab enclosures when bottom mounted per the manufacturers instructions so they need to be back or side mounted to be effective and to work safely but because this is a much less effecient means of using the pad it needs to be rated for an enclosure 3X's the size of the one you want to use it on so for a ten gallon tank you will need a pad rated for a thirty gallon.For a 55 you'll need one pad rated for a sixty gallon and one rated for a thirty gallon to get the right heat output as uth pads are only meant to boost the internal temp of the tank seven to ten degrees from room temp.On extremely cold nights you may also find that you need to have an overhead heat source ie: heat(moon glo or infrared) bulb mounted in a reptile dome refelector.I would do a minimum of a fifty but no more than seventy watt heat bulb in conjunction with the heat pads but only when the pads aren't putting out enough heat on their own.I'll stop here and let you digest this info and either I or someone else will get back to you and please don't hesistate to ask as many questions as you need to as that is what we are here for.

[Herman Coen]

Thanks Crabber85, I appreciate all the knowledge, wisdom, experience, and time everyone has conveyed here at LHC. Your advice is very consistent with all I have read here. I love Colorado and my drafty little house, but when winter comes, the windows will radiate cold at night and the afternoon sun can heat rooms to uncomfortable levels. My small tank fluctuates already. Specifically I would like to hear from everyone who has experience with thermostats. What makes and models they have used, which are available. A thermostat that I can use on my starter tank and later use on the 55g. I suspect there is something outside of the pet care industry that would work well, not that ZooMed wouldn’t work, but, given how harmful and thoughtless so many of the pet industry products are, I think there may be better ways. I like the Zoomed with the humidifier, but also the other with 2 channels for heat. I would like to provide lighting as natural as possible, so at least a timer and thermostat are needed. I Will likely need both lamp and pads for heat. Because we do have power interruptions, I am also thinking of a some sort of large, heavy heat sink under the tank (my industrial mindset) that I would heat. Steel, masonry, glass, ceramic or whatever I could salvage. Mostly, I’d like to get out of my shell some and just discuss things. Have been out of work for a year due to injury, and these curious little creatures called hermit crabs have captured my attention and respect.

[Crabber85]

We don't use thermostats to control temp output because we typically use uth pads that don't respond well to being repeatedly turned on and off as thermostat will do but rather rheostats and these little devices are so unreliable that I won't use one.You can't actually use a thermostat to increase the temp of the devices that are connected to them as the uth pad has a set temp that it runs at meaning it's not on a variable scale.My dad is an industrial electrician/mechanic by trade and he doesn't like rheostats because of the way they work they tend to get hot really quickly and can melt and even ignite if the wrong wattage/amperage/voltage is directed through them.Basically a rheostat takes in the full amount of power that the heating device calls for then redirects some of that to a dispersal coil or transistor where the energy is dispersed as heat hence the tendency to overheat.Some of the newer uth pads and heat lamps come with rheostats built into them and we have found that the rheostats don't last long.I hope this helps.

[Crabber85]

You really don't want to heat from the bottom up as hermitcrabs burrow to get away from the heat of the day as it gets cooler the farther down you dig so it would be counter-intuitive to put a heat source where one doesn't exist naturally.The depth and dampness of the substrate required by hermitcrabs acts as an insulating barrier trapping the heat generated on the bottom of the tank and since hermitcrabs can't sense heat the way mammals do they will burrow down and simply cook themselves without knowing it.The other downside is the heat that gets trapped on the bottom will build up causing the pane of glass to expand and if any amount of cooler water should make it's way down to the bottom and come into contact with the expanding pane of glass the glass will suddenly try to contract causing a massive crack or outright shattering the glass endangering the occupants, spilling out most if not all of the substrate and anything in the sub.We usually recommend having a battery powered back up power supply for the heating equipment for our members who live in states or countries that see heavy and or harsh winters and regularly experience power outages as a result.

[Herman Coen]

I didn’t want to apply a lot of heat to a large base heat sink, it would be risky as you have described. Something large at room temp would help hold temp for a good amount of time if insulated covering were placed over the tat and pillows under in an outage event. Backup sounds good (bigger the better), how long could it last (many variables), heaters draw a lot of power? I also do have generators if I get really desperate.Thanks Crabber85, I’m getting closer to what I need.

[Geranium]

quote:Originally posted by Crabber85:We usually recommend having a battery powered back up power supply for the heating equipment for our members who live in states or countries that see heavy and or harsh winters and regularly experience power outages as a result. Does anyone have feedback on the battery run generators/back ups for UTHs. How big of a watt/amp machine do I need? We only have lost power once during the 11 winters we've lived here but I still worry. I can't really put all of them into small enough enclosure(s) to evacuate them as we did the one time it happened.

[Crabber85]

@Herman Coen, I know of a couple of members who use the back power systems meant for sustaining multiple electronics like tv's, computers, cordless home phones and the like at the same time and from what I gather Duracell makes a good batter powered back up power supply that uses an exterior solar charging station to provide interruptible power.The batteries in this type of back up power supply typically last for eight to twenty hours of run time depending on the wattage of the unit you select and the wattage required by the devices you need to power combine this with a solar charging capacity and you will have enough juice to keep the unit running almost indefinitely.This brand of back up power supply comes in wattages from 30 up to 2000 and the price goes from a few hundred dollars to well into the thousands.Each watt version has an available solar charging kit that can be purchased separately.You could do a heat sink that indirectly heats the enclosure keeping the temps stable around the area that the enclosure is in and that would be safe and ideal.@Geranium, you need a power supply that not only meets the total wattage off all of your uth pads, heat bulbs and other lighting but exceeds that by at least 100 watts to be safe.

[Herman Coen]

Solar would go over very well here. A UPS is also the way to go. I have had good service using APC in the past. Aside from the life span of the batteries, very sustainable. A UTH creates a rather hot spot in a rather small area. If a heat sink were to cover the entire footprint of the tank, and if a consistent temperature of say 5-10 degrees lower then the ideal upper level temp, would the hermies be comfortable? Aluminum would be ideal. Has anyone ever used a tile bathroom with an under floor heat source, it is very nice. It does increase evaporation, could probably deal with that easily. I would sure love an uninterrupted 360* view, to see through my tat without those ugly heat pads all over as it will be in the center of the room, of the house. That is one goal. Not trying to reinvent the wheel, I just know what I want. Thanks again, getting me in the right direction.

[Crabber85]

The reason why we use spot heat like the uth and heat lamp is because we are aiming to create two or more temperature zones in the enclosure provided the enclosure is large enough(anything thirty gallons and over)as this mimics the hermitcrabs natural environment by giving it multiple choices to choose from.This gives the crab the ability to choose what temperature it wants to be at based on it's current needs.You never want to uniformly heat the entire enclosure if it can be helped for the above stated reasons.We know that achieving dual or multiple climates in enclosures under thirty gallons is pretty much impossible so we don't stress the point with members who are just beginning the hobby with a starter tank(typically ten to twenty gallon) so you don't need to feel pressured into doing this for the ten gallon but it would be beneficial to do it in the larger tank.I'm very familiar with the type of heating your talking about with your bathroom scenario, it's called radiant heating and is accomplished by passing hot air or water through specialized pipes that have been placed beneath the flooring.This kind of heat works because heat rises and and radiates outward from the source giving a uniform temperature to the floor and the room.You could theoretically do radiant heat on a hermitcrab enclosure but the enclosure would need to be a minimum of fifty gallons and the heat source would have to passively effect the enclosure rather than directly heating it but it could definitely work.

[Herman Coen]

Crabber85, That is encouraging. I understand the variable environmental temperatures that the crabs would enjoy, and that is why this form of under tank heat would be cooler then above the substrate by “X" degrees, and the tank temp regulated using lamps on the top, even allowing that gradient from top to bottom, one end to the other. It may be best to use two smaller base sink heaters (need a name if one doesn’t already exist) rather then one large, or even more. It would be economically much more efficient given the cost of electricity.

[Crabber85]

@Herman Coen, yeah I can definitely see what your saying.Building on your basis its actually completely feasible on larger tanks to heat the substrate to a comfortable temp (ie: between seventy and seven-five degrees would be perfect as this would keep the crabs who are burrowed warm without cooking them as in the case of bottom mounting a uth pad that runs at 90 degrees or higher),and have the heat in the substrate be augmentative to the overhead heat sources.In this scenario I would do ee or eco-earth as the substrate since it doesn't act the same as sand it wont block nearly as much heat from rising up through the layers thus allowing a sufficient amount to escape helping to keep the temp in the sub stable whilst not allowing to much too build up on the bottom.I know a couple of people on a different forum who have done similar things by directly heating something else beneath the tank stand and having the heat rise from said object to gently warm the bottom of the tank getting the substrate to about seventy-three degrees as they felt the unheated sub was too cold only registering at around sixty degrees with nearly two hundred watts of overhead heat going constantly.It would be beneficial to have some sort of digital probe you could use to keep accurate check of the substrate temps with so that if you need to increase or decrease the amount of heat you can do so without stressing the crabs out too much.

[Herman Coen]

I have ordered a zoomed thermostat for the tank I am now using, but have given a lot of thought into making a ‘pad’ to place my newer 55g on. I have decided to sandwich resistive wires between two surfaces and am looking around in used material shops for items and ideas. I will keep you posted and if successful, will document and post the method. Thanks Crabber85 for helping me sort out what I need to do.

[Crabber85]

Please do and your welcome for the help.

[Herman Coen]

OK, I finally got around to making something. Most think I was going overboard on it but oh well. Scouring the used building supply store, and an electric blanket I had, and some odds and ends laying around, the "heat sink" is working. I went with a 3/4" base of plywood, self leveling flooring subset, and 4 large floor tiles. Imbedded and suspended in the cement mortar I put a resistive wire from an electric blanket. Around the edge is 2 1/2” wood molding to hold the tank in should it get bumped it won’t slide off. Tiles were then grouted. It adds 2” to the height of the tank, and gets warm and holds heat well, radiates it softly. I left the plug on the wire so that the blanket controller can hook to it, and other then removing the second loop of wire sewn into the cloth (it had two circuits through the blanket, his and hers I guess) the electric part is intact and easy enough. One end was wired with a little more heater wire to make that end warmer. A digital thermometer probe was place in the middle of one end. In the garage where it was 50* F, it warmed to about 70*. The only problem, the blanket was old and didn’t have a thermostat per say. It is on or it is off (I may be able to remedy this). It is plugged into the new Zoomed thermostat, and changes temp soo slowly it is easy to monitor, but that also means that it needs monitoring. But only slightly. In the house where it is between 68 to 75 or more, it will get too warm if not on the thermostat. I now need to get some system of lighting now, that is, something to hold the lights. I have everything (Natural light, ceramic, red, and timer) but a physical hood of some sort to get the lights in the right places. I have a red inferred and an UTH on the sides for now, and the gradient in temp is there. When the power goes out, I should be able to go many hours without worrying about the gang getting too cold. More to do, but I’m getting there.