My Hermit Crab Tank is Too Hot, What Do I Do?
There is a heat wave traveling across the U.S. How do we keep out crabbies cooler in the hot summer months?
Before you panic, remember that hermit crabs come from very warm climates. For example, the Seychelles Islands, where many Straws come from, have temps as high as 89 degrees (fahrenheit to celsius converter) during the day in April with evening temps ranging around 77 degrees.
So when we’re climbing into triple digits what can we do to keep the tanks a little cooler?
- Turn off your UTH and lights during the day - turn them on at night if there are extreme temperature drops. Crabs will dig down into the sand when it’s very hot to cool themselves so you don’t want to leave a UTH on during the hot weather
- If you have air conditioning or fans you can use them, but watch the humidity. Fans and air conditioning can suck the humidity right out of the tank. Drape a wet towel over the tank if you have a mesh lid to help to keep the air cooler, but the humidty more stable. Be sure to keep a close eye on your gauges
- You can make “dechlor” ice cubes to put in your pools to keep the water cool
- While the Tropic Aire Humidifier doesn’t cool the tank, it does keep the air circulating in the tank which may be helpful
- Some folks use frozen water bottles, frozen veggies, bags of ice cubes and other frozen items inside and outside of their crabitats. If you do put something frozen in the tank, be sure that it’s out of reach of the crabbies
Here are the instructions for a homebrewed air conditioning system that you may want to try in your crabitat room.
