I know this is probably a bit of a controversial topic because Exotics Lair is controversial. My personal opinion of him is that he's grossly negligent (one-handed husbandry because he won't be a head-mounted camera or something) in a lot of the videos he makes and his tarantulas are often the ones who suffer for it. But that's a topic for another day.
I've always really liked the look of his enclosures and I've been wondering what people think of them. I'm talking specifically about he uses (what seems to be) building foam to create natural-looking enclosures and natural hollows/burrows for the spiders. This results in being able to offer less substrate, but maybe that's not the end of the world because there's a much lesser fall risk and the terrestrial spiders probably don't have as great a need to burrow if they have "natural" burrows to live in.
I recently greatly reduced my tarantula collection and I now only have 7 "big" tarantulas and I've been thinking that a nice idea for a new project might be to "upgrade" the enclosures for all of them. They're currently all in 30x30x30cm cubes (same size as exotics lair) and I'd like to have custom enclosures made that offer them all 35x35cm floor space just so they have that little bit of extra space. I'd really like to offer them really good enclosures in which they'll be really happy and I feel like doing something similar to what Exotics Lair does might achieve that. Meaning enclosure walls made out of styrofoam or building foam and styled to look natural and then decorated inside with plants and the like. What do folks here think about the idea?
I've always really liked the look of his enclosures and I've been wondering what people think of them. I'm talking specifically about he uses (what seems to be) building foam to create natural-looking enclosures and natural hollows/burrows for the spiders. This results in being able to offer less substrate, but maybe that's not the end of the world because there's a much lesser fall risk and the terrestrial spiders probably don't have as great a need to burrow if they have "natural" burrows to live in.
I recently greatly reduced my tarantula collection and I now only have 7 "big" tarantulas and I've been thinking that a nice idea for a new project might be to "upgrade" the enclosures for all of them. They're currently all in 30x30x30cm cubes (same size as exotics lair) and I'd like to have custom enclosures made that offer them all 35x35cm floor space just so they have that little bit of extra space. I'd really like to offer them really good enclosures in which they'll be really happy and I feel like doing something similar to what Exotics Lair does might achieve that. Meaning enclosure walls made out of styrofoam or building foam and styled to look natural and then decorated inside with plants and the like. What do folks here think about the idea?