New and Improved Crabitat, questions.

[Ben K]

Well. I recently set up a crabitat. I threw in 7 red claw crabs and 4 fancy guppies into a 15 gallon tank. This tank was probably reduced to 10 gallons due to a some dry land that I added to it. Now that the tank has been up and going for a while, I have seen the errors of the first set up.

• • small river I made caused erosion which requires that I add sand to the dry land every now and then.
  • sand, which is pool filter sand, is rather wet, thus meanign the dry land isn't really dry but instead wet like the sand after a wave has washed up on the beach and then back out to the water.
  • The tubing that is taking water from the pump to the river is rather murky now and a eye sore, could have hidden it a little better.

So now I am working on a newer 20G Long set up and thought I would ask your opinion.
Reference Image:

• 1) I am thinking of setting up a small dry land area where the sand will be completely dry, or at least hopefully. Now, do fiddle crabs like a bit of moisture in their sand or do they like it dry dry? I know they like to dig, but dig in what type of sand? This will be pool filter sand.
  
  2) Due to the dry land area being an "floating" block (will silicone the glass in place) do you think there should be some sort of support to hold this section up? I was think if there was, make some sort of column in the style of a ruin column. How would I go about doing this? What materials would I use?
  
  3) The area under the dry land area will most likely be dead water. To help fix this, I was planning on putting a 3" or 4" diameter air stone which is designed to be buried. Would this be enough?
  
  4) With this buried air stone, would burying it in a sand substrate, even though this pool filter sand is very coarse (grains being on average 1mm large) be bad for the airstone? Would the airstone displace the sand and unbury itself? If so, is it possible to have gravel in the section under the dry land box and then sand everywhere else/ I really like the look of sand better then gravel and with my layout plans sand would be easier to work with then gravel.
  
  5) What do plecos think of sand substrates? Would the sand substrate be unhealthy for a pleco?

 

[zenkatydid]

whenever i've seen fiddler crabs in the wild, they've been on wet sand. i don't recall seeing them venturing onto the dry sand. wet sand is much, much better to dig in than dry, which will just collapse unless held up with, well, wet sand.

what is the block made out of? just make the column out of whatever the block is and silicone them together.

does the tank have a filter? if so, surely the powerhead/output on the filter would be enough to circulate the water under there?

don't know about the unburying or the plecos.