Unpopular opinion: using bigger enclosures for juveniles and adults is absolutely fine

Lice1721

Arachnopeon
Joined
Nov 11, 2018
Messages
27
Adults can be housed in large tanks, but it takes more of a design thinking than in a small, what i mean is that it is harder to get them to thrive with ease, in a very large enclosure. Juveniles and slings are 8/10 times not thriving in a to large enclosure. I often hear "but in the wild they have infinitive space!" Yes, the wild is a totally diffrent thing. In the wild they have millions things to their disposal, totally diffrent from captive keeping. Indirectly in a way, they have no infinitive space. Tarantulas are no explorers that like "bear Gryll" happily walking miles into the jungle. They have their burrow and maybe out of the burrow they walk 8 inch? It is not good for them to venture far from their burrow mouth. I'd say it is more important to keep a deep layer of sub than have a large areawise enclosure!
I say this with 20 years of experience of tarantulas, among this experimenrations with diffrent cages
Yes they pretty much live their intire lives in their burrow in the wild. When I'm talking about they have basicly unlimited space in the wild I mean that they have many opportunities, 'choices' to find the perfect place to burrow etc. So on this logic if you give them a bigger enclosure they have more options to burrow etc. They may not like the hide you provide but if enough space is provided they may create one themselves (as I've seen plenty times). Or alternatively you can add multiple premade hides in bigger enclosure and maybe your T will choose one but woudln't use the other if that would be the only one.
 

NukaMedia Exotics

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I thought it was odd that you didn't give that nice T more leg room. Hold your hand out for it to hang out on, and dig a lot of that out ;)
In the future once she needs it, and when my hazmat suit comes in. The first thing she did when I got her into the enclosure was stand on the doors, then she moved a little and shot a stream onto the right wall LOL.
 

Vanisher

Arachnoking
Old Timer
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Oct 2, 2004
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2,533
Yes they pretty much live their intire lives in their burrow in the wild. When I'm talking about they have basicly unlimited space in the wild I mean that they have many opportunities, 'choices' to find the perfect place to burrow etc. So on this logic if you give them a bigger enclosure they have more options to burrow etc. They may not like the hide you provide but if enough space is provided they may create one themselves (as I've seen plenty times). Or alternatively you can add multiple premade hides in bigger enclosure and maybe your T will choose one but woudln't use the other if that would be the only one.
In a way are you right. But ut is very hard to replicate the wild in an enclosure. Sure in a bigger tank you can have multiple retreats, uncreasing the cgance if the spider finding one of them to uts liking. But try to keep a juvenikebin s very big tank. Put the same jyvenile in a much smaller cage. Often they show totally diffrent behavours! In a large cage they roaming around in a small cage they settle down often readily! This is my experience
 

Patherophis

Arachnobaron
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May 24, 2017
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407
actually I based the formula on a simple fact: 4(dls)^2 - LW >= 0, is based off fitting the tarantula itself. that's 2(dls)^2 and enough room for molting and a water dish that's the other 2. It's the bare essentials. You could keep a fossorial in a more arboreal dimensional space but filled with dirt, but I don't recommend exceeding this rule at all.
any smaller is asking a camel to fit through the eye of a needle. Fine for transportation but inappropriate for living.
I suppose this is a joke right?
Actually I mean it. Seeing spiders like Poecilotheria spp. or asian fossorials thriving and breeding in 1.2 gal enclosures kinda change one's perspective.
 

Uial

Arachnosquire
Joined
Jun 11, 2018
Messages
67
I think that it's all dependent on the Ts behavior. When I first got them, I put my adult B. vagans in a 30x60 cm enclosure and my adult C. cyaneopubescens in the 30x30cm enclosure. The 30x30 is sufficient with the roughly 3 times legsspan in both directions. But the GBB is a climber and explorer and the vagans has never left her hide for other reasons than to drink. So I exchanged the enclosures. The vagans copes just as well with half the space because she's cooped up in her hide anyhow. And I used the extra space in the 30x60 cm enclosure to build a bigger hide with a perch and leaned some cork bark with plastic flowers onto the wall which the GBB utilizes. She climbs and often sits in different spots in the enclosure, so that is a better fit for her.
 

Willa

Arachnopeon
Joined
Feb 27, 2019
Messages
31
Put my B. albo (2.5-3 in DLS) at the time in an adult enclosure (8x8x14) and he did splendidly (and continues to do so). IMO, it was safer for me and him because there was enough space for both of us to work in the same area (adding substrate, changing water dish, maintenance, etc.) and enough space for me to maneuver and have reaction time. It worked great for us, but I can see both sides of the argument.
 

StampFan

Arachnodemon
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Jul 12, 2017
Messages
756
My experience in invert and reptile forums is people use threads like this to feel virtuous, pat themselves on the back, and brag about how big their enclosures are for the good of their animals. You could also call it a "mine is bigger than yours" contest, which is pretty typical of some users in some forums. You can pick these people out because they can't *wait* to tell you how big they have one enclosure for one animal.....

In some cases with some animals large enclosures create problems.

I've also regularly seen users who brag about large enclosures then post pictures of animals in relatively small enclosures.

If you want a good example, do a search of A geniculata, and see how many people who have 8 inch specimens that actually offer an enclosure that's more than 24 inches long and 16 inches wide (3 times DLS length, 2 times DLS width). There are some, but most certainly not all.

I've been using the @Tomoran idea that once a harder-to-rehouse terrestrial T is more than 3 or 4 inches it gets moved into an adult enclosure.
 

Lice1721

Arachnopeon
Joined
Nov 11, 2018
Messages
27
My experience in invert and reptile forums is people use threads like this to feel virtuous, pat themselves on the back, and brag about how big their enclosures are for the good of their animals. You could also call it a "mine is bigger than yours" contest, which is pretty typical of some users in some forums. You can pick these people out because they can't *wait* to tell you how big they have one enclosure for one animal.....

In some cases with some animals large enclosures create problems.

I've also regularly seen users who brag about large enclosures then post pictures of animals in relatively small enclosures.

If you want a good example, do a search of A geniculata, and see how many people who have 8 inch specimens that actually offer an enclosure that's more than 24 inches long and 16 inches wide (3 times DLS length, 2 times DLS width). There are some, but most certainly not all.

I've been using the @Tomoran idea that once a harder-to-rehouse terrestrial T is more than 3 or 4 inches it gets moved into an adult enclosure.
I didn't brag about how big my enclosures are or that I know better than you what is good for a T. I only said that in my experience larger enclosures (that are often called 'waaaay too biig' etc. on this forum) are just as fine or somtimes even more practical than small or 'recomended' ones.
Even I got that advice that I should cup my T when doing maintance instead of rehousing it into a more pracitcal bigger enclosure.
Also I'm using cheap plastic encloures and I have only 9 T's atm, so nothing fancy to 'brag about'. I get that if you have a lot of T's you don't want to/can't house them in large enclosures but thats another question.
 
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