Eco Earth

[mxxlane]

Hi please help!! My boyfriend and I just upgraded our ten gallon to a twenty gallon for our herms and got the compressed coconut fiber expandable substrate by eco earth. I was about to put it in the water but saw something about it being bad for them?? Some even said it killed there crabs. Any suggestions?

[wodesorel]

Eco Earth is fine! Crabbers have been using it for decades. Keep in mind that it needs to be somewhat fluffy, many times if you mix it according to the directions it will be too wet for the crabs ton safely molt.

[Hermiesguardian]

It helps if you mix it with playsand. You can get that cheap at a hardware store. Just make sure when mixed you get it to sandcastle consistancy.

[JoeHermits]

Soaking EcoEarth in dechlorinated fresh or salt water will not harm the crabs.

There have been rumors about how using too much salt will harm the crabs. They can easily withstand up to double strength salt if they have to. You likely won’t ever use that much, but the point is it’ll take a lot to hurt them.

Many crabbers have been using plain EE for years without issues. The HCA recommends a 5:1 ratio of playsand and coconut fiber, but only EE can be done. Just keep it moist enough to hold tunnels (sandcastle consistency).

Is this helpful? I’m not quite sure what you mean when you say they claim that EE killed their crabs.

[soilentgringa]

Soaking EcoEarth in dechlorinated fresh or salt water will not harm the crabs.

There have been rumors about how using too much salt will harm the crabs. They can easily withstand up to double strength salt if they have to. You likely won’t ever use that much, but the point is it’ll take a lot to hurt them.

Many crabbers have been using plain EE for years without issues. The HCA recommends a 5:1 ratio of playsand and coconut fiber, but only EE can be done. Just keep it moist enough to hold tunnels (sandcastle consistency).

Is this helpful? I’m not quite sure what you mean when you say they claim that EE killed their crabs.

There has been a bunk rumor going around for years that the acidity of Eco Earth dissolved molting crabs.

The reality is that Eco Earth has the same or even more neutral pH than tropical soil which was like a 3-5 IIRC. So it's even less acidic than the wild.

What was really happening is that crabs were dying of natural causes, decomposing and then owners found the empty shells and assumed they'd been dissolved.




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[GotButterflies]

One thing that I wanted to mention, is that when you moisten the eco earth, make sure that when you take a fist full of it that you cannot squeeze any excess water out of it. I personally recommend moistening ee with dechlorinated msw, but this is my personal preference

[piratetoothgir]

One thing that I wanted to mention, is that when you moisten the eco earth, make sure that when you take a fist full of it that you cannot squeeze any excess water out of it. I personally recommend moistening ee with dechlorinated msw, but this is my personal preference

You can’t squeeze it out? Why?

[Hermiesguardian]

One thing that I wanted to mention, is that when you moisten the eco earth, make sure that when you take a fist full of it that you cannot squeeze any excess water out of it. I personally recommend moistening ee with dechlorinated msw, but this is my personal preference

You can’t squeeze it out? Why?

It just means that if you squeeze out water it's too wet. So either keep squeezing out the excess or add more substrate to absorb it.

[piratetoothgir]

It just means that if you squeeze out water it's too wet. So either keep squeezing out the excess or add more substrate to absorb it.

Oh, well then I just misunderstood the post