Ikea Milsbo Lighting Ideas for Hermit Crab Habitat Fun!
Add lighting to your hermit crab habitat and show it off day and night! There are lots of fun ways to brighten up the enclosure and make it even healthier for your hermit crab pets.
By adding different types of lighting, you can provide a bright healthy sunshine atmosphere for your hermit crabs during the day.
Then add softer backlighting for nighttime simulating a full moon effect.
Want to add live plants to your hermit crab habitat, add some grow lights!
Ideas for Types of Lighting
Hermit crab habitats don’t have to be limited to what’s for sale at the pet store! Pet manufacturers don’t create hermit crab specific products, they simply repurpose things they already make for other pets.
So get creative! Don’t rely on others to tell you what a hermit crab habitat should look like, or how the lighting should be! Some ideas…
- bright daylight like tropical sunshine
- low light like a full moon at night
- grow lights for live plants
- spotlight for accent lighting or heat
- heat for winter
Make your Hermit Crab Habitat Bright, Happy & Healthy!
What do YOUR hermit crabs want? How do they live in the wild, and can you create a similar environment? There’s NO reason to stick to the regular aquarium strip lights or reptile bulbs. Here are three options to consider, that can work GREAT in hermit crab glass enclosures:
LED "Daylight" Bright White 2.25" puck lights with dimmer
The LED puck lights we chose are “daylight” 6000k, the brightest white available. They are dimmable, but we like to shine these lights bright during the day for our hermit crabs. Why?
It makes the habitat look beautifully close to sun-shiny without the heat, like a tropical day on a Caribbean island where our Purple Pinchers originate from!
These lights are most marketed as “under cabinet lights” and we found these on Amazon for $21 for the set of 4. We have these lights plugged into an auto-timer so they come on and go off at the same time each day (we have them set to go on at 8:30a and off at 9p).
As as supplement to these lights, we use a set of grow lights plus backlights. Why so many lights?
These 3 sets are timed to simulate a sunny tropical “daylight” during the day, a bright happy late afternoon/early evening time period so WE can enjoy the habitat, plus a backlit time period later at night that give the effect of a full-moon atmosphere where dim light shines through the habitat from the back.
All lights go off at 1pm (when we’re asleep and no longer enjoying our hermit crab habitat) which is when hermit crab party time usually happens!
Grow Lights for live plants with Auto-timer, Dimmable
Most grow light sets have a built-in auto-timer. These timers can be set for 3 hour, 9 hour or 12 hour cycles (or similar timeframes). We have our grow lights set for a 3 hour cycle. This would not be enough for most live plants, but we have no live plants in our hermit crab habitat currently (because they love to destroy them!). We use these lights to make a nice transition after “bright sunny day” to early evening.
We originally had these grow lights on the top back of the habitat (3rd photo above). But we switched them to the front so they can provide more light to the front of the habitat (1st and 2nd photos above). They come on at 7p each night, and remain on WITH the main LED puck lights, until 10p.
To “set” grow lights to come on at the same time each day is simple! Just turn them ON at the time you want them to come every day, and set which cycle you want them to stay on (3 hour, 9 hour, 12 hour) and you’re set!
Backlighting with LED strips on outside back of glass
LED light strips are designed to be installed under-cabinet. They would normally be stuck to the underside (hidden from plain view) of a cabinet and shine down. However, we want them to be stuck to the outside back of our glass habitat and shine INTO.
The good news? It doesn’t need to be pretty! As long as you strategically hide the strips from front views, you won’t need to worry about making the installation attractive.
We use a removable clear tape to secure the ends of each strip to the glass, and we purposely make sure it’s fairly loose. This allows any heat that may get emitted from the lights (since the light is pressed up against the glass).
We hide each light strip from plain view by strategically making sure each strip is “hidden” just behind a level or structure. For example, we have a light strip placed directly behind the first level that has our “Crab Shack Food Stand” and “Black Lagoon” water pool.
Each of these structures has a “window” so the backlighting can shine through, illuminating the inside and making it look cool from the front. We don’t see the light strip itself, only the light glowing through. This part of the process is our FAVORITE! We take A LOT of time on this to make sure the front view is as perfect as possible.
DAYLIGHT VS. WARM WHITE
Update: we installed a “warm white” set of LED strip lights for our backlighting (2700K brightness). But warm white has a yellow-y tone to it. After about a week we decided we don’t like this tone, and will be switching to the same set but in a bright “daylight” tone (6000k brightness).
They are dimmable, so even though we may not want the lights to be full bright, it will be “white” versus this yellowish tone (photo 2 above). We’ll add photos of new light set below, for comparison, once we install them.
Use an E26 spotlight: switch between heat and LED bulbs
Update: we removed the grow lights and added a spotlight. We used this E26 clip-on fixture inside our Ikea Detolf Crabitat Hack, and just transferred it over to this Milsbo hack. Most of the year we use a regular “daylight” bright white LED bulb.
In winter for a little heat, we put a heat bulb in.
For more on bulbs and fixtures, see our post on heating hermit crab habitats here.
Note: make sure you secure the cord/fixture because your hermit crabs WILL try to climb on it! Our cord goes through the grommet and hole on the top and is secured on top.
Click --> for easy directions and exactly what you need!
Add holes to the top and bottom of the Ikea Milsbo (or other enclosure with a metal top/bottom) so you can easily add and change lights and light fixtures.
You can also easily add other corded things like water filters or bubblers or foggers, now… or later IF you have holes and grommets in place.
And yes you NEED grommets! These are plastic covers that allow cords to go through but hermit crabs NOT to crawl out!
Click for photos, a step-by-step and ideas/tips! We use a grommet (hole cover) plus circle/hole saw bit and we show these products to make it easy.
This post, and all information on this website is provided for idea-purposes only. Information shared on this post and website should be further researched and is NOT intended to be directions for electrical or other professional work. The information shared is SOLELY meant to share what we have done for our own hermit crab habitats. Do your own research, consult a professional when needed for any work to your own projects.
Last update on 2024-04-27 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API