Recent content by Vermis

Orange heads rather than dubias here, but this is my setup. 18 litre vented tub. About an inch and a half of coir (with a bit of sepiolite clay) and a 'roach hut' of slats cut from a 6" plastic pipe offcut. Cork bark to finish the effect. I started off with no substrate, like most...

Hello! Nice spider. One of the first, and least problematic, that I started with. Your tarantula already seems to be a pretty healthy size. With mealworms that comparatively big, I think 3-4 a week could soon result in a very swollen T! The most I feed is once or twice a week, and that strongly...

(Addendum: if it helps, my orange head roaches completely ignored the food I sprinkled spirulina into, though that might have been more due to the lo-pro rabbit nuggets in it. My red heads loved it.) I had a look down Roach Crossing's Florida list myself and, man, the non-climbing options are...

I have some of those myself, but haven't used any for plain water so far. I'll have to set them up and see how fast they dry out.

Buh!? Well I splurged on a bottle of spirulina tablets and used half a one on roach chow already. I don't doubt that there are plenty of claims that spirulina is an anticoagulant, in the way homeopathists might claim that the vibrations are totally copied over to plain water, so I took a look...

It's like Shelob turned up in the Shire, looking to settle the score. :p

:D Ha! Every T keeper needs to have at least one OBT sometime. And now you do. Luckaaay...!

Criminy. You should see the way they treat newbies over at *the other tarantula forum*. That's a big part of why I'm here. Oursapoil's 'welcome to the forum' posts, whether or not they have a core of frustration in them, are like feather-light caresses in comparison.

We used to have Petsmart over here, years ago. I have vague memories of seeing tarantulas in the conditions described. The UK stores got taken over by homegrown chain Pets at Home. They've had their own controversies and scandals, made public. Which is why, I think, whenever I go into a branch...

Ditto. The nighttime temperatures over here rise to 4-5° and I couldn't sleep in the sudden heat! As a kind of TL;DR: to my last post, I'd say smaller mats are more about boosting temps a few degrees above ambient, rather than reaching a very specific temperature. I don't know what to say about...

Ah good, Spider Shop's finally back up so I can post this. :p https://www.thespidershop.co.uk/product-category/equipment/terrariums/acrylic-terrariums/ (Scroll down, scroll down) I have a look at these every time I browse TSS. Again, they look nice, but as a display piece. (OCD, but when...

Gonna be honest, I think there's a bit of paranoia about heat mats. I used them years ago when I first kept inverts and I use them now, with no casualties. Sure, don't use them underneath the viv, or in it, or even stuck against the side. (The bulky lids of my food containers and storage boxes...

Shoot, I'm wincing here. I've been waiting months for the frosty weather to be gone so I can have things posted. Even just cleaner isopods! Good to hear they arrived okay. Tough as nails little spoods.

When I got these little guys I set them up in a 4 litre cereal canister with a load of collected leaves and beech bark. They ate everything. All but one twig, though they hoovered up all the bark off that. They were long overdue for a rethink and a retooling, and here they are now. In addition...

Hullo! That's a nice start you made.