Are you a Tarantula hobbyist? If so, we invite you to join our community! Once you join you'll be able to post messages, upload pictures of your pets and enclosures and chat with other Tarantula enthusiasts. Sign up today!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dave Jay" data-source="post: 139624" data-attributes="member: 27677">To make substrate firm enough to hold a burrow you need it wetter than is desirable and you have to compact it as you go, add a couple of inches and compact it as much as possible, add another couple of inches and compress that and so on until the desired depth is reached. Compacting it in stages makes a big difference, much firmer than adding it all at once and then compacting. After it's added I like to spray the walls and decor to remove stray substrate and wet the entire surface. As it dries it will set hard, so much so that you cannot push a pencil etc into it to make a hole, you actually have to dig. I too find flower pots useful,  either in halves or just a piece to lay on the surface for the animal to burrow under. I find the squared plastic "tubes" used to grow seedlings on in useful too, either with the bottom cut out as a tunnel type hide or the cut off corners sitting on the surface of the substrate. I often cut various curved pieces out of plastic pots and tubes and use them in baby invert enclosures where the humidity causes wood or bark to go mouldy. With both plastic and terracotta I sand the edges so they are not sharp.</blockquote>