Instant Ocean vs. Oceanic - Salt Water for Hermit Crabs
Typically on Thursday nights I do a semi-deep clean of my tanks. I empty the pools, clean them, scoop poop and any food that may have been “hidden”, remove items that look dirty and boil them, and tidy things up. I decided to do my cleaning last night instead of my usual Thursday evening
The last couple of weeks I haven’t noticed much poop in the substrate and I’ve been wondering where they’ve been hiding their waste. When I was cleaning the aquatic landing that holds reptile moss and two small coco huts, I discovered their litter box; they’ve been emptying their shells on the second story. This is a really good thing because it’s so easy to pull the aquatic landing out of the tank to clean it. I had put the crushed coral sand in the tank in March and had planned to do a substrate change this month, but the substrate still looks so good, I think I can wait until July. I love those aquatic landings! I keep reptile moss and coco huts on one and the spare shells on th other. They have four large suction cups “built-in” to attach to the aquarium wall. So far I’ve had no problems with them falling.
I have been using Instant Ocean to create salt water in my crabitats. This was the first brand that I was “exposed” to, so I have stuck with it. When I went to buy salt mix a couple of weeks ago I was broke (these crabbies are sending me to the poor house) and decided to try a small pouch of Oceanic salt water mix since it was only a few dollars.
I finally needed to mix my new salt water last night and what a difference! With Instant Ocean it takes a lot of shaking for the salt crystals to “mix” and they never really fully dissolve. Usually within a day the salt has separated from the water and lays at the bottom of the bottle, similar to oil and vinegar. I keep air stones in all the salt water pools to keep the Instant Ocean circulating constantly. The Oceanic dissolves immediately and this morning I looked at my gallon bottle and it was still “mixed”. The crabs seem to enjoy it, I saw many of them going for a swim last night including my other Indo and a few E’s.
