Ikea Detolf Crabitat Hack
Update: Ikea discontinued the Ikea Detolf, but has several other options that also work great as hermit crab habitat hacks. I’ve also included a couple of Ikea Detolf knock-off cabinets available on Amazon, below.
This guide and tips for the Ikea Detolf will help you plan out and build any hermit crab habitat hack, even on a glass cabinet that is not from ikea or the Ikea Detolf specificially.
Plan carefully, be creative and patient, and you’ll be able to provide a lot more space for your hermit crabs, for a lot less money than buying a terrarium or aquarium from the pet store.
Tall Glass Cabinet Habitat Hacks Allow Your Hermit Crabs to Climb UP!
Ikea Detolf Crabitat Hack is a favorite habitat upgrade of hermit crabs everywhere (so we’re told!). It’s over 5 feet tall, so there’s tons of space for climbing branches and multiple levels.
Did you know? Hermit crabs, most especially Caribbean Purple Pinchers (most common type in the U.S.) climb up into trees and dense bushes as part of their natural daily activities! They are natural explorers and climbers.
This hermit crab habitat hack starts with the popular $79 Ikea Detolf. NO SPECIAL TOOLS needed!
[Update: the popular Ikea Detolf is not currently available and has been replaced by the new Ikea Blaliden. The footprint is very small on this new glass cabinet, and there is no interior metal frame to easily secure horizontal levels to. While possible, using this glass cabinet will be a challenge to make a healthy habitat for more than 2-3 small-medium hermit crabs].
If you’ve got $279… go for the Ikea Milsbo!
Ikea Detolf Habitat Hack project, including lighting cost us about $130, and it took about a week to complete.
When Planning, Make Sure You Know the 8 Essential Elements of a Hermit Crabitat!
Ikea Detolf is 16″ x 16″ and stands about 5 feet tall! Tons of climbing space for your hermies to enjoy.
Ikea Milsbo is a wider glass cabinet and my current favorite hack (measures 29″ wide by 17″ deep x 69″ tall. See it here.
How Many Hermit Crabs Fit In the Ikea Detolf Habitat Hack?
The footprint (bottom substrate level) is 16″ x 16″. This means you have to be smart of how you use the space. Remember to leave plenty of open substrate space for burrowing on the bottom level.
I suggest placing one water bowl on the bottom level, and building a secure place for the second water bowl on a level above.
There should be a good amount of surface space left to burrow into (or under the water bowl as hermit crabs often like to do).
I recommend using this Ikea Detolf for 2-4 hermit crabs.
This hack is a GREAT way to give your older large hermit crabs extra climbing space (if you have Caribbean Purple Pincher hermit crabs, they’re gonna love it!
We have one large and two medium hermit crabs in this habitat. We’ve had these hermit crabs for many, many years. They’ve been in this Detolf crabitat for about 5 years. This is a great space for about 2-5 hermit crabs at most, because the surface/substrate space is limited (16″x16″). We use 8″ deep substrate.
This is a great solution IF you have limited space but want to upgrade your current enclosure AND if you only have a few hermit crabs and want to give them more climbing/exploring space vertically.
IF you want a similar type of hermit crab habitat but for more hermit crabs or if you have a larger space and budget… we recommend considering the Ikea Milsbo Hermit Crab Habitat Hack!
The footprint (bottom substrate level) is 16″ x 16″. This means you have to be smart of how you use the space. Remember to leave plenty of open substrate space for burrowing on the bottom level.
I suggest placing one water bowl on the bottom level, and building a secure place for the second water bowl on a level above.
I also suggest creating multiple hideaway spaces, spaced out on different levels. I recommend using this for 2-4 hermit crabs. This hack is a GREAT way to give your older large hermit crabs extra climbing space (if you have Caribbean Purple Pincher hermit crabs, they’re gonna love it!).
Ikea Detolf for $79
The Ikea Detolf is a very simple, elegant looking glass display cabinet. It has 4 sides of glass and a solid top and bottom.
The frame is metal. It comes with 3 glass shelves that sit on a metal frame.
The Detolf measures 16″ wide and 16″ long, and is a whopping 64″ tall!
Imagine how HAPPY your hermit crabs will be with over five feet of climbing space!
Caution: the glass is thin and breakable, so be careful when assembling (it’s a 2 person job!).
And place it in an area of the house where it won’t get hit or banged into!
Crabitat Project Costs
We transferred some of the elements of the original crabitat like the hanging coco-hideaway and ladder, the food and water bowls and artificial greenery. Besides those elements, we spent about $130 for what you see in these photos.
Here’s a breakdown of our costs for this Crabitat:
- $79 Ikea Detolf
- $10-$20 Great Stuff Pond & Stone expanding foam
- $10 clear or black aquarium caulk sealant
- $10 coco fiber brick
- $10 play sand from Home Depot
- $10-20 heat lamp short neck clip-on light
- $20 under cabinet LED bright white strip lights
*Great Stuff Pond & Stone can sometimes be hard to find. We paid $10 for a 12 oz bottle, but the current price is $20. There are some alternatives, but make sure the product adheres to glass and that it’s non-toxic and waterproof when dry!
Why the Ikea Detolf can make a great Crabitat!
- It’s only $79!!!!!!
- It’s a great-looking piece of furniture!
- It doesn’t take up much space (just 16″ x 16″ footprint)
- It’s TALL! Hermit crabs have over 5 feet of climbing space
- It has a small hole in the top to add an optional Ikea light kit
- a glass backing allows for creative, unique lighting effects!
- it comes with 3 glass shelves (used to secure bottom level substrate)
Ready? First... it's important to consider the possible challenges in using the Ikea Detolf as your hermit crab habitat enclosure, so you can plan around those challenges and find great solutions!
Challenges with building a Crabitat from the Ikea Detolf
Before investing your $79 in the Ikea Detolf, it’s important to know the challenges with this hack:
- 16″ wide x 16″ long means less surface space for substrate + large water bowls
- it’s best to use acrylic risers so deeper substrate can be used while protecting from tunnel collapse
- a glass back means no way to thread airlines and wiring through the back
- 4 glass sides are thin and breakable so you’ve got to be extra careful when building
- you’ll need to get creative and use the vertical space smartly (ie where will you put the extra shells)?
- you’ll need lots of tall-ish climbing branches
- you’ll need to connect all levels from bottom to top for easy climbing for all size hermit crabs
- decide from the start what kind of lighting you want (see below for options/ideas)
START at the Bottom, and Build UP
The Detolf is a front-opening display cabinet. How will you secure 5-8″ of substrate in the bottom if you open the door and it all falls out?
The Detolf comes with glass shelves, each 16″ x 16″. Because you will NOT be using these in your crabitat as shelves… you can use one of them to build a bottom/front solid section for substrate.
You can use a second shelf (2nd of the 3 glass shelves included with the Ikea Detolf) for the bottom. While not necessary, it will help to protect the bottom Detolf platform from excess humidity, moisture and water spilling from bowls.
What else did we do on the bottom substrate level? What do we recommend?
Glass sides are thin... be careful!
It takes two people to put the Detolf together. Don’t try to do it with just one person because it’s easy for the sides to break while assembling. Also, don’t put this in an area of your home where there’s lots of activity. If someone or something hits it, it could shatter.
Our Ikea Detolf Crabitat Hack is on a wall in our dining room where there is no close walking traffic, no real way for kids or pets to hit or crash into it.
Adding levels to your Crabitat
Hermit crabs LOVE climbing! When planning levels, consider adding a hanging coconut hideaway, plenty of wood branches, and even rope ladders!
Plan out your crabitat levels to be connected by different pieces of wood and other secure structures that all sizes of hermit crabs will be able to climb on to get to another level.
Use the Detolf wire frame to build your levels.
Building levels
To build levels, you’ll need some wood planks or plexiglass 16″ wide. You can also use dense styrofoam (see below). Use the Detolf wire frame to rest your 16″ wide wood, plexiglass, styrofoam planks on to create horizontal levels.
Build your levels at the back and keep plenty of space in the front open. Example: a 16″ length of stryrofoam should only be about 8″ from the back, leaving lots of space in front to add climbing branches, ladders and other ways for your hermit crabs to travel between levels.
Secure horizontal levels to the back of the glass enclosure (Ikea Milsbo pictured)
For more tips and ideas on adding levels, see my post created for the Ikea Milsbo hack
Tip: use toothpicks and bamboo skewers to adhere styrofoam pieces into the shapes you want. Then adhere to glass with Pond & Stone foam product.
Tip: “paint” styrofoam with Quikrete or similar cement product, then add color for rock look.
Great Stuff Pond & Stone is non-toxic once dry, and normally used in the construction of koi pond waterfalls. It’s a spray foam that expands and sticks to most everything. Spray it onto glass and metal and wood, it sticks and expands. When it’s dry you can cut away pieces to form it into the shapes and look you want, or leave it as it is (black).
Our Ikea hack crabitat used 1 1/2 bottles of the Great Stuff Pond foam to secure all wood branches, add a background to parts of the back glass pane, and create some hiding caves.
The Ikea Milsbo has extra screw holes (due to unused glass shelving) you can use to add metal brackets or hooks for extra support.
Depending on the weight of your horizontal levels, you may need to add extra support. Ideas: look for unused screw holes (could be for unused shelving) or use metal corner brackets secured to glass using aquarium caulk.
Building structures with styrofoam and pre-mixed concrete
This reddish structure serving as the middle layers in the crabitat was built from pieces of styrofoam. We started saving packing materials from various deliveries we had been getting a couple months prior to building this crabitat project. The styrofoam is a great lightweight base material to create hideaways or structures. BUT hermit crabs WILL amuse themselves by digging into styrofoam! They won’t eat it, they just like to dismantle it for fun (kinda like what we do with those sheets of bubblewrap!).
Coat any styrofoam you use with a pre-mixed concrete or grout type of product. Pre-mixed concrete comes in small quart plastic containers and you can add a little powder concrete coloring to it (we mixed a little black in with brick color). When it dries, it’s pretty stable and the hermit crabs can even crawl on it! Grout can also be used but sanded is better than unsanded, and you can find all kinds of colors to choose from! The downside to grout is that it tends to flake off and crack a little more than concrete does, over time and as it may be used.
Because we have some larger hermit crabs, our substrate is approximately 8″ deep. As a result, we were concerned that the tunnels dug by the smaller hermit crabs could cave in and sufficate them when under heavier elements like water bowls! We now put an acrylic display riser under any larger sized (and/or heavy) elements on the bottom substrate level. In the above photo, there is a 6″ tall acrylic riser underneath the large water pool.
Want to see what we did, how we did it and the problems this solution solves? Click here for our blog post on Crabitat Solution to Protect Hermit Crabs from Fallen Tunnels in Substrate
Great Stuff Pond and Stone Foam
This product, normally used in the construction of pond waterfalls, works great for building natural-looking elements in crabitats! Once dry, this foam can be cut to the shape of rocks or caves, tree roots etc or leave it as it is. Coat with clear or black aquarium sealant (acts like glue) and apply coco fiber and or sheet moss. This creates a natural look for backgrounds (vertical) and shelf levels (horizontal).
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Lighting
Lighting on top
Ikea has a lighting kit that you can add to the Detolf. There is a small hole where you thread the wire through the top. We decided we wanted a heat lamp on top instead, so we opted for a clip-on short neck heat lamp for reptiles. We like this light fixture because you can use daylight LED bulbs as well as heat lamp bulbs. So depending on the time of year and temperature of the house, we can easily change the bulbs.
We almost always have the “daylight” LED bulb inside the clip-on light heat lamp because it’s a beautiful bright white color that makes the hermit crabs happy. BUT when it’s winter and chilly inside, we switch to the heat bulb (the one we bought from Amazon came with one, and we replace the bulb once ever 1-2 years depending on how much it’s used). The beautiful bright white back lighting are LED strips used for under kitchen cabinet lighting. And we put everything on timers so the hermit crabs have a consistent cycle of night and day.
Lighting on backwall
We wanted a very airy, open feel to this Crabitat. So we kept large areas of the back glass open. This allowed us to put under-cabinet LED light strips on the back wall in the places we wanted, so the light shined through specific spaces we thought would look cool. These lights are inexpensive and come in different colors. We always prefer the brightest “daylight” white so our hermit crabs feel like they’re outside. You can put these on an inexpensive timer so your there is a daylight cycle same time each day.
Some extra details on the cost of elements added:
**We already had all the additional elements for this Crabitat hack including water dishes/bowls in the smaller crabitat we transferred these hermit crabs from. We also found the wood planks (cut to 3×16″ wide each), artificial succulents and various fake greenery and climbing branches, coco-fiber/sand substrate, etc. between our garage, shed, parent’s garage and our big bin labeled “pet stuff”.
Tip: keep a large bin of pet stuff… bird cage accessories (like wood ladders and perches!), aquarium stuff (like airline tubing and airstones!), bowls, extra shells, etc. because you never know when you may want to repurpose!
Got deep substrate? Worried the tunnels your hermit crabs dig will collapse? SOLUTION!
Because we have some larger hermit crabs, our substrate is approximately 8″ deep. As a result, we were concerned that the tunnels dug by the smaller hermit crabs could cave in and suffocate them when under heavier elements like water bowls!
We use acrylic display risers under any larger sized (and/or heavy) elements on the bottom substrate level. In the above photo, there is an 8″ tall acrylic riser underneath the large water pool. These risers are open on the bottom allowing hermit crabs the space for molting. They DO LOVE burrowing under these. Why? They tend to have a little extra moisture which makes the substrate ideal.
Acrylic risers come in all heights. Choose one to match the how high your substrate will go. 6″? 8″? Place sheet moss on top creating a nice transition to the sand substrate, which also works to capture any water spills.
Want to see what we did, how we did it and the problems this solution solves? Click here for our blog post on
–> Crabitat Solution to Protect Hermit Crabs from Fallen Tunnels in Substrate
Last update on 2024-11-21 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API