I made something <3 CRABITAT!!!

[Sweet Pea]

Nice crabitat. There is so much room!

[lauraroberson]

Awesome stuff! For never building anything before this thing is really great. I want one! Lol.
Would be really cool if you eventually took great stuff foam to the walls!


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[KellyCrabbieLove]

Awesome stuff! For never building anything before this thing is really great. I want one! Lol.
Would be really cool if you eventually took great stuff foam to the walls!


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Great idea!

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[nepenthes]

Sstone: I've seen a few people use small oil heaters in large closed wooden enclosures like yours. A shelf was built to hold it above substrate level and for crabs, I'm sure you can build some sort of non-metallic cage around it to keep the climbers away.

Another option, like you mentioned, would be to switch both CHEs to 150W. Insulating the outside of the box could probably help slow down heat loss, too.

[SstoneC21]

@lauraroberson my girlfriend wants to do that soon so probably will be done haha

@nepenthes REALLY?! I'll def. look into something like that I found a reptile mimic heater still doing research on that but its like a space heater for habitats haha.

[Giga]

There are many things wrong with this setup, don't mean to be a barer of bad news but here's what's wrong with this.

1) you used plywood-plywood is held together with glue and pressure when it's made. One the glue is harmful(minimal threat) to crabs and will start to split apart within 6 months time-wether the wood is cedar or oak it will start to rot and warp weather you think it will not. I have build more tanks and aquariums then I can count including plywood ones. The only way around this is epoxy resin not polyurethane. polyurethane will have a blush on it and leaches things-never ever use it in aquariums. You use fiberglass in the epoxy resin to strengthen the bond so it doesn't break and create leaks. The humidifier will keep the humidity up but that will cause the untreated wood to warp.

2)If this is a false bottom you will get mold in the free space on the wood. It'll be hot and humid and since it has exposed to air it will rot weather you think so or not. You did not say what you actually used to cover this but I doubt it's sufficient, and the pond liner is only a temporary measure.

3)The air pump(if this is an aquarium one) serves no purpose. You need something like dc computer fans to provide air circulation for the enclosure. This will help with stale air and help will warping/mold/rot and prevent it from happening as fast.

4)The last thing I worry about is having such high heating elements in a wood enclosure. Wood is not a good insulator like acrylic or glass is. You should put some sort of insulation material on the outside and this will help with heat. A black foam kind would be best as the pink or blue polystyrene at lowes can leach fumes-harmless to us but may be a irritate to crabs. Like a wide insulation tape would be ez since it's tape.

5) Do you have the heater connected to a rheostat? what if a crab gets up in the hear and kock it down or it malfunctions. Also is that plugged into a regular outlet on the wall or a GFCI? Needs to be a GFCI to shut the heaters down if they malfunction, and detect a fault.

This is just my experience so you can take it with what you will but I build system to last for years and do know what I'm doing(most of the time anyway lol)