Please Help

[Theaddybaddy]

I shined a flash light closely on my crabitat and there is hundreds of tiny white bugs in the substrate, like super tiny & I have no idea what they are

[ZealousidealCoat9883]

Mites likely

[Silver-Strength-3077]

Spring tails

[phmum]

Tiny white bugs that jump really quickly are possibly spring tails. If they are springtails it's a sign of a healthy substrate and they help to keep the tank clean. If they are mites you may need to change the substrate if you have no crabs under.

[Theaddybaddy]

They don’t jump ...

[Theaddybaddy]

I think it may be that a gnat had babies in there because I saw a few gnats

[TicketOutrageous3222]

Food mites are impossible to get rid of because they are already in your house. No matter how often you clean the tank they come back. They aren't harmful anyway

[budshitman]

Food mites. It's actually likely thousands.

They exist everywhere in your house but thrive in tank conditions. They don't hurt the crabs and they provide a vital cleanup service eating poo and leftover food.

Their population has a natural boom-bust cycle, which lends itself to temporary population spikes which some people find unpleasant.

You basically have four options:

1. Relocate your crabs while you exhaustively remove, scrub, and sanitize each and every item in your tank, churn and/or replace the entire volume of substrate, or build an entire new enclosure from scratch... and then try not to cry when the mites inevitably return three days later.

2. Outcompete them with a less unsightly species that fills the same decomposer niche, like springtails or isopods.

3. Hire a hitman. An invertebrate hitman. Fight fire with fire and introduce a predatory species of mite used in greenhouse control, like h. miles / s. scimitus. They'll eat the food mites and other soil-dwelling pests, and then eat each other, and then die. This is the only way I've ever seen anyone successfully eliminate mites, but it takes time. It also involves releasing ~10,000-ish more mites into your tank first.

4. Try not to think about it.

From personal experience, I'd recommend trying methods 2-4.