Life in a bin – a hermit crab story

So my current set up is a traditional set up in a 150 gallon and a temporary bin set up for my little hermit crabs. When warm weather arrives I will begin to rebuild the vertical crabitat for the littles.

While the main tank has a normal activity level the little tank is so quiet. I rarely see them out anywhere. Granted they are small and therefore molting a lot. However the bin lid is opaque so they are not subjected to constant shadows moving over them so I expected the opposite to happen and to find them MORE active. The humidity is higher in the bin and the substrate is damper. They are without a dedicated light source at the moment but get shared light from the lights on the 150, plus my overhead light and windows. The walls of the bin are translucent.  I have their light on hand now just trying to figure out how to cut a hole in the bin lid and we are good to go.  I am curious to see if that improves their activity levels. This is the first time I’ve not had an overhead light on a crabitat.

(A-weema-weh, a-weema-weh, a-weema-weh, a-weema-weh)
(A-weema-weh, a-weema-weh, a-weema-weh, a-weema-weh)

In the bin, the toasty bin
The crabbys sleep tonight
In the bin the quiet bin
The crabbys sleeps tonight

First follow up:

Feb 8, 2017 and the crabs are more active now that they have regular light or maybe they were molting…either way I see the littles trundling about. I will continue to monitor.