Lighting a Tarantula Home

[Deborah Richardson]

Sorry to bother you guys, but I am really at a bit of a loss here.

I have a sub-adult B.smithi and 6 tiny, assorted South American slings (Brachyplemas and Grammostolas)

The smithi is in the medium, low, Exo-terra faunarium with a heat mat covering half the back wall. She tends to spend all her time by the heatmat.
The babies are in delipots in another exact same faunarium but with a bigger heat mat covering the full back wall.

I was worrying because my house gets cold during the night, I can't afford to keep the heating on all night. I have been getting up to the digital thermometers in the tanks being around 15 degrees in the past week. And this is not as cold as January, by any means During the day the thermometers vary from 20-22 degrees. This is with the heating on so I am comfortable, any hotter in here and I would feel ill.

So, following advice from various tarantula owners, I bought a Viv-exotic LX36 vivarium and popped both tanks in that. The idea being that the heatmats will be more efficient now inside a wooden box. So I had a happy afternoon assembling that and putting the tanks and cabling in.

I don't yet know if it will keep the tanks warmer (it better!), but I have discovered a bit of a side-effect that I never thought of.

I can only just see the spiders through the glass doors. Right now I have the normal room lighting turned on and can see the spiders, but not clearly. I don't know if it will be better in daylight, the vivarium is on the wall between the two windows, so I doubt it.

Can I light the vivarium in some way, so I can see my lovely tarantulas? I know they don't like bright lights, and am aware that it can dessicate them, so obviously don't want to glare them out. But I do want to see them!

I would be very grateful for any advice on this. I am a fretter and it seems the more I do to try to make things perfect for my fuzzy friends, the more issues I find, heh.

[Thomas Jessen]

Have you thought of using a thermostat! That way you can control how warm there are.
Otherwise, there is light sources such as led lightning that just gives weak light, and you can see you T´s.

[Deborah Richardson]

Both heat mats are on seperate thermostats. The temperatures were previously not getting close to the setting though.

This evening the tanks have been a few degrees warmer, which is more comforting. The acid test is what they will be like in the morning, heh.

I am thinking that a red LED light might do the trick

[laurance_mccann]

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Hi Guys.
I’m Using Custom Aquaria glass tanks with wire mesh vents which run the length of the tank at the rear. They all have glass lids as well.
I usually use eco earth in all my tanks.

What I seem to find works best for me and my T's is I buy a few bricks of eco earth and go through the whole process of adding the 3 litres of water to each brick and letting that stand for around 30 to 40 minutes. Then I start the laborious task of wringing it all out and placing in in to a few bowls and letting them stand for a few weeks to dry somewhere hot in my house but making sure I turn the earth twice a day. I find this works really well for my set up because too much water in the earth just means I spend the next 3 weeks mopping the inside of the tanks. This only happened the once and I took my T out after a day.

I find once the earth has dried out I can then take the amount that I need for which ever tank I need to change and place that into another bowl and using a plant mister I can then spray and mix the earth to how my T will like it. Don’t get me wrong it takes most of my day up just doing 2 tanks out of the 4 but it's well worth the effort.

The picture above has shredded coconut husk in it as this was all I could find with out travelling over 20 miles for the eco earth. To be fair I doubt I’ll use it again. It seems to make tank maintenance rather hard and my A.Geniculata just tries to run up my tongs and eat me every time! Little sod.

As for heating I use heat mats stuck to the back of the tanks with polystyrene stuck the backs of the mats and this summer I just turned them off. . The temp never really rises over 25c to 26c and never drops below 23c and all my T's seem to be more than happy.

Humidity all depends on how much water I mix in which also depends on the species when cleaning out the tanks. Every now and then I will mist one side wall of the tank and they all seem to like this.

Oh and I don’t use any lighting for them as of yet but it would be rather nice

[Peter Roach]

I buy a few bricks of eco earth and go through the whole process of adding the 3 litres of water to each brick and letting that stand for around 30 to 40 minutes. Then I start the laborious task of wringing it all out and placing in in to a few bowls and letting them stand for a few weeks to dry somewhere hot in my house but making sure I turn the earth twice a day. I find this works really well for my set up because too much water in the earth just means I spend the next 3 weeks mopping the inside of the tanks.

This seems a really long winded way of preparing the eco-earth for use to me.
I put 1 eco-earth brick in a bucket, pour 5 pints of tepid water and leave for approx 15-20 mins. I then squeeze out as much water as i can by hand and then spread the eco-earth out on newspapers to a max depth of 1 inch and left overnight. This is normally almost dry by the morning.
If i need it quicker i just put a spare heatmat under the newspaper and its almost dry in a few hours.
Once i have it the right 'dryness' i put it in a bucket with a lid and it stays just right until i need it.
I've made up and used 18 eco-earth bricks this year doing it this way and found this is the easiest way for me.

laurance, the tank seems on the small side for the size of the genic and the coconut husk isnt making it any better.
If you cant get any eco-earth just use the commonly available compost from B&Q or bagged up top soil. If you are really stuck use dirt from the garden, put it into a plastic bag, spray it with some water and the microwave it in the bag to kill any nasties. leave it in the bag until it cools and voila ! ! ! You have substrate
Both are very cheap and can be bought in any DIY shop or garden center.
I ran out of made up eco-earth last weekend and had to re-pot over 60 juv's, so 'borrowed' some of the missus's B&Q compost for substate. I didnt mind nor did the tarantulas. As long as it hold some moisture, the spiders dont care.

[laurance_mccann]

I no she has out grow her tank and i will be sorting out another one at the end of the month with a new heat mat.

I only do the whole process of the eco earth that way because i have no where to lay bits of news paper. To be fair though many people have told me to use this method.

Have any of you guys ever used the coconut husk??? Im all open to new idears.

This seems a really long winded way of preparing the eco-earth for use to me.
I put 1 eco-earth brick in a bucket, pour 5 pints of tepid water and leave for approx 15-20 mins. I then squeeze out as much water as i can by hand and then spread the eco-earth out on newspapers to a max depth of 1 inch and left overnight. This is normally almost dry by the morning.
If i need it quicker i just put a spare heatmat under the newspaper and its almost dry in a few hours.
Once i have it the right 'dryness' i put it in a bucket with a lid and it stays just right until i need it.
I've made up and used 18 eco-earth bricks this year doing it this way and found this is the easiest way for me.

laurance, the tank seems on the small side for the size of the genic and the coconut husk isnt making it any better.
If you cant get any eco-earth just use the commonly available compost from B&Q or bagged up top soil. If you are really stuck use dirt from the garden, put it into a plastic bag, spray it with some water and the microwave it in the bag to kill any nasties. leave it in the bag until it cools and voila ! ! ! You have substrate
Both are very cheap and can be bought in any DIY shop or garden center.
I ran out of made up eco-earth last weekend and had to re-pot over 60 juv's, so 'borrowed' some of the missus's B&Q compost for substate. I didnt mind nor did the tarantulas. As long as it hold some moisture, the spiders dont care.