Sunday, 14. June 2009, 22:28
Text: Monika Rademacher/Ygra
translated by Ulli Bauer
Unfortunately all of us come across postings where you read that shortly after being put into their lovingly set-up new homes, crabs or other inverts suddenly become lethargic, lose limbs or even die.
Just too often, these problems result from causes that would have been easily avoided if the keepers had known about potential risks (which they only seldomly do). An outcome of this is that these aspects only become of interest when the animals already show signs of poisoning and they can hardly be helped any more.
In order to try to prevent these problems, this thread is to name obvious and often-seen potential dangers and give you alternatives and ideas how to avoid them.
PLANTS
One of the most important points here is how you deal with new plants.
Often, aquatic as well as terrestrial plants are over-fertilized or treated with pesticides killing off insects, eradicating snails or preventing algal growth... While all of them are stored inside the plants' tissues, they are highly toxic for many inverts. This makes amply watering plants you are planning to have in a crab (or shrimp or crayfish) tank highly recommendable.
It is not enough to simply rinse them thoroughly under running water, because you do not want to get rid of stuff on the plant's surface in the first place, but of poisons deeply embedded in the plant tissue. If you don't do this beforehand they will leak out when the plant has been placed in the water part/aquarium, or it gives them off to the ground substrate on the land parts; moreover, when the animals decide to nibble on these polluted plants they will poison themselves in doing so.
How can you prevent inadvertedly poisoning your inverts? Well, this is pretty simple, you just have to water all the plants in separate containers for a longer period of time before placing them in a tank.
Aquatic plants
With plants that are to go under water this is rather easily done. First you remove all weights or rock wool that might be around them, and then you just put them into a bucket for example, and fill that with water. Now you ought to change all of this water daily and do so for at least one week.
The method to get marimo (moss) balls clean is a little different, you have to rinse them under running water first by pressing them like a sponge for several times, letting them soak full of water again and then pressing again. After that they also go into the bucket. This washing procedure should be performed for at least a week, daily.
Plants do significantly better during this watering period btw when you light them for several hours a day.
Terrestrial plants
Watering different terrestrial plants is a little more complicated. As a first step, they have to be entirely freed from all planting substrate, if possible without damaging the roots too much. Then you rinse off substrate remainders with water, and, depending on the plant species, you can entirely submerge them for a few days, with daily water changes, or you have to try to submerge as many of the roots as possible without getting the leaves under water. In order to find out which terrestrial plants sustain being immersed in water for days on end you might have to try and have a close look every day if they start disintegrating. If the plants start to look sick, just their roots ought to be watered in continuity, however, then it might make a lot of sense to lengthen the watering period.
However, there are quite a few terrestrial plants that have storage roots, these might need an even longer watering time in order to get all possible pollutants out or disintegrate them. We have been treating these by completely ridding them of their substrate, planting them into pots with terrarium humus and waiting for several weeks until we put them into our tanks. We do the same to plants belonging to the orpine family; due to their fleshy leaf structure they might be able to store pollutants for a longer period of time, too.
In general it is highly recommendable to just put in plants when you can watch the tank inhabitants within the first few hours after planting so that you can act quickly and efficiently in case they show signs of acute poisoning.
_________________________________________________________________
We are going to list different potential hazards in the further course of this thread, however, it will not feature an answering option as it serves for information purposes and we can thus guarantee a certain structure.
However, should anybody from this community miss or want to give important information, please do not hesitate to send me a pm, I'll complete the posts here by the respective information.
translated by Ulli Bauer
Unfortunately all of us come across postings where you read that shortly after being put into their lovingly set-up new homes, crabs or other inverts suddenly become lethargic, lose limbs or even die.
Just too often, these problems result from causes that would have been easily avoided if the keepers had known about potential risks (which they only seldomly do). An outcome of this is that these aspects only become of interest when the animals already show signs of poisoning and they can hardly be helped any more.
In order to try to prevent these problems, this thread is to name obvious and often-seen potential dangers and give you alternatives and ideas how to avoid them.
PLANTS
One of the most important points here is how you deal with new plants.
Often, aquatic as well as terrestrial plants are over-fertilized or treated with pesticides killing off insects, eradicating snails or preventing algal growth... While all of them are stored inside the plants' tissues, they are highly toxic for many inverts. This makes amply watering plants you are planning to have in a crab (or shrimp or crayfish) tank highly recommendable.
It is not enough to simply rinse them thoroughly under running water, because you do not want to get rid of stuff on the plant's surface in the first place, but of poisons deeply embedded in the plant tissue. If you don't do this beforehand they will leak out when the plant has been placed in the water part/aquarium, or it gives them off to the ground substrate on the land parts; moreover, when the animals decide to nibble on these polluted plants they will poison themselves in doing so.
How can you prevent inadvertedly poisoning your inverts? Well, this is pretty simple, you just have to water all the plants in separate containers for a longer period of time before placing them in a tank.
Aquatic plants
With plants that are to go under water this is rather easily done. First you remove all weights or rock wool that might be around them, and then you just put them into a bucket for example, and fill that with water. Now you ought to change all of this water daily and do so for at least one week.
The method to get marimo (moss) balls clean is a little different, you have to rinse them under running water first by pressing them like a sponge for several times, letting them soak full of water again and then pressing again. After that they also go into the bucket. This washing procedure should be performed for at least a week, daily.
Plants do significantly better during this watering period btw when you light them for several hours a day.
Terrestrial plants
Watering different terrestrial plants is a little more complicated. As a first step, they have to be entirely freed from all planting substrate, if possible without damaging the roots too much. Then you rinse off substrate remainders with water, and, depending on the plant species, you can entirely submerge them for a few days, with daily water changes, or you have to try to submerge as many of the roots as possible without getting the leaves under water. In order to find out which terrestrial plants sustain being immersed in water for days on end you might have to try and have a close look every day if they start disintegrating. If the plants start to look sick, just their roots ought to be watered in continuity, however, then it might make a lot of sense to lengthen the watering period.
However, there are quite a few terrestrial plants that have storage roots, these might need an even longer watering time in order to get all possible pollutants out or disintegrate them. We have been treating these by completely ridding them of their substrate, planting them into pots with terrarium humus and waiting for several weeks until we put them into our tanks. We do the same to plants belonging to the orpine family; due to their fleshy leaf structure they might be able to store pollutants for a longer period of time, too.
In general it is highly recommendable to just put in plants when you can watch the tank inhabitants within the first few hours after planting so that you can act quickly and efficiently in case they show signs of acute poisoning.
_________________________________________________________________
We are going to list different potential hazards in the further course of this thread, however, it will not feature an answering option as it serves for information purposes and we can thus guarantee a certain structure.
However, should anybody from this community miss or want to give important information, please do not hesitate to send me a pm, I'll complete the posts here by the respective information.