Hemrit crabs dieing

How thick is the crushed coral

HI,
Many time the crushed coral acts like a waste dump it traps alot of the waste and food making it very difficult for critters to clean it up,
You may want to start over with a good sand , its hard to fix that crushed coral maybe you could vaccum it daily with a siphon hose. Its a hard call if your crushed coral is real thin maybe a 1-2 in sand bed on top would prevent deitris entering the coral. you will loose water volume.
doug
I would set up a temp tank and move the stuff to it rinse the crushed coral move any live rock to the temp tank,and then allow it to settle out then move the animals break down the main and buy a good argonite sand and start over, the temp tank could be a isolation tank for you new purchases so you don't haave to treat your main tank.Use your original filters on the temp system this may prevent cycling .and resist feeding
I recently added a 3rd tank to my water column this increases the total water with out adding a sump for each system and they share two skimmers. You can be very creative when your trying to increase water volume in a smaller system, I ve even seen people use trash cans to cycle rock for a main system. it works as a filter/ reforguim too and adds quite a bit of water to the system. my 55 gal now has a 100 gal total reserve with the sump and the third tank.
your fish will hunt the pods like sharks, I ve only been able to raise mine in a sump/reforguim with plants/lights I have a plastic shoe box with its own light. they hang out in there doing what ever and they occasionally get slurped up by the return but some remain in the plants. In a tank only there very little hidding and the fish think they are candy.

first attempt at reforguim/sump snails, glass shrimp no starfish no hermits.




psps I am very new to saltwater so I would get more opinions before you do anything drastic. to your system.

 

lol nother update. so One has died . ah well. The other one is still making it though. today im changing my substrate to sand. put the crab somewhere else, and what happens? It starts moving???? why could it not do that in the tank? hopefully he'll live for the next few hours as im waiting for everything to clear so I can arrange the tank, check perimeters, etc before putting my livestock back in. this was alot more work than I thought. But I did do a complete water change, except for maybe 1/2 gal-1gal of original water. Got my fingers crossed.
p.s.---the new sand looks great from what I can see thru the cloudyness