San Francisco Bay Area Tarantula Society

daveemory · Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 3:05 pm Post subject: substrate layer concept

Let's just say I have a 20 gallon tank and I want to fill it up perhaps half way with soil for a 5" L. parahybana. My general mixture of potting soil and peet moss for non-tropical spiders is very heavy stuff. So I would like to try using a mix of coco fiber and my soil/peet moss mix, since I have enough of both to do the job.

If I were going to use a heat pad under part of the tank, which would cause the soil to desiccate, if I wanted to take advantage of the coco fiber's moisture-holding properties somewhat, should I:

1. put soil/peet on the bottom and coco fiber on the top

2. put coco fiber on the bottom and soil/peet on the top

3. mix it all together

?

PC

CodeWilster · Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 4:55 pm Post subject:

I've always had the best luck using 100% coco. I've noticed that it stays much cleaner and does not mold like peat does oftenly.

You would probably have the best luck keeping the peat toward the bottom I guess. Peat is much more on the acidic side, and were it on top it would leach tannins when you add moisture that would acidify the coco (which I believe is roughly neutral) and over time they would almost kind of mix themselves anyway. When I used to keep peat I would occasionally churn the substrate to prevent mold growth too.

Peat is probably a more natural substrate for most Ts, although I think in captivity coco is much better and stays cleaner. And because it is generally neutral and low in certain organic compounds peat is probably rich in, less fungus and mold would grow (that's at least my theory).

You could probably mix and match the two like you said, I would go a bit heavy on the coco though.

If you like the look of peat but wanted to use coco, go to your local pet shop and see if they have the single brick Fluker's brand of coco. The Eco-Earth stuff is usually a bit stringy and not very consistent, I've found that the Fluker's stuff breaks up in water much quicker and is very consistent, not to mention dark like peat and nice and soft.
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Bonobo · Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 5:07 pm Post subject:

you could also try putting a heat pad on a back wall , or on the wall in back of the tank , it creates an optional margin of warmth that doesnt facilitate the evaporation so readily

cacoseraph · Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 5:15 pm Post subject:

it seems to me that the smaller, more regular particle sized cocofiber doesn't retain burrows very well. it works ok for like a year and then the burrow starts to collapse. even when i packed the heck out of it... and packing made a HUGE positive difference. well packed sub versus weakly packed sub is no contest... the weakly packed sub was just awful for retaining burrows after a few months, sometimes

i mixed stringy or longer pieces of either coconut fiber or spruce (er... whatever the non-pine family stuff that is readily available is). with the mixture like, more hetero than homo i had burrows last ~2.5 years or so.

also, the sub mixture didn't seem to matter for anything except large ~1G+ cages. i think smaller sized cages don't get enough like, weight per volume to matter as much... the webbing that coats most burrows was plenty strong enough

i had pretty good luck with no mold on coco... but i did get a tainted brink (and of course it was when i dropped $40 on a super brick) that was BAD! i reckon preboiling the coco would deal with most of the problem and you would just have to worry about contamination after the fact

edit:
is suspect the greater the angle of repose of the sub the better the capability to retain a burrow over time
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sntcruzan · Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 6:11 am Post subject: My thoughts

I like to mix in a little Green moss dust/fiber in with my Coco for it holds moisture and not bad looking for my higher moisture T's, I haven't seen any contribution to mold or such.

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