I was very anxious about the idea of removing him from his tank for this - while I know that his sting is likened to a bee or a wasp sting, I don't actively expose myself to bees or wasps. I don't want to be stung, at all. Nor do I want my daughter to be stung, so she was removed from the room while I was doing this. I needn't have worried, however. While he was a little wary of me, and clearly did not want to be handled, he was very easily herded into a plastic container which previously housed some crickets. He didn't appear pleased with this, however:I had bought some extra substrate, some bark chips, and some sphagnum moss from amazon, so I was able to cover the bottom of the tank. However, he would clearly prefer the substrate to be deeper. He keeps digging in his substrate, and has repeatedly dug down to the bottom, so more substrate is on order to allow him to dig some more. A water bowl, and some spider plants completed the setup. I don't know how well the spider plants will do in the tank - I may end up replacing them with plastic ones yet, but as he was wild caught, I wanted his tank to be as naturalistic as possible. As soon as he was released back into his tank, he went straight back under his hide. Oh well.Overall, I was quite pleased with how his tank looked. Unfortunately, I'm not sure he agrees. He repeatedly fills his water bowl with dirt, and he is still patrolling his enclosure at night, tapping on the glass. Some googling suggests this may be a normal behaviour, that he is just "exploring", but I still would like to give him more space to explore. The dream is a whole back-lit invertebrate wall in my new front room. Wish me luck with that!
I was very anxious about the idea of removing him from his tank for this - while I know that his sting is likened to a bee or a wasp sting, I don't actively expose myself to bees or wasps. I don't want to be stung, at all. Nor do I want my daughter to be stung, so she was removed from the room while I was doing this. I needn't have worried, however. While he was a little wary of me, and clearly did not want to be handled, he was very easily herded into a plastic container which previously housed some crickets. He didn't appear pleased with this, however:I had bought some extra substrate, some bark chips, and some sphagnum moss from amazon, so I was able to cover the bottom of the tank. However, he would clearly prefer the substrate to be deeper. He keeps digging in his substrate, and has repeatedly dug down to the bottom, so more substrate is on order to allow him to dig some more. A water bowl, and some spider plants completed the setup. I don't know how well the spider plants will do in the tank - I may end up replacing them with plastic ones yet, but as he was wild caught, I wanted his tank to be as naturalistic as possible. As soon as he was released back into his tank, he went straight back under his hide. Oh well.Overall, I was quite pleased with how his tank looked. Unfortunately, I'm not sure he agrees. He repeatedly fills his water bowl with dirt, and he is still patrolling his enclosure at night, tapping on the glass. Some googling suggests this may be a normal behaviour, that he is just "exploring", but I still would like to give him more space to explore. The dream is a whole back-lit invertebrate wall in my new front room. Wish me luck with that!
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