Tanner Dzula
Arachnoknight
- Joined
- Feb 29, 2016
- Messages
- 190
yes. dry with a water dish, for most beginner tarantula's.This flies in the face of everything i have read on AB, anytime you go on here asking anything about humidity, people sing "dry with a water dish". That has been my experience, i see that very strongly adhered to and i dont see the difference with what stan is advocating.
He only recommends keeping them drier after the sling stage is past. The swampdeller thing is just a name, man, here is what he actually says.
TKG, 2nd edition, pg 245, top left paragraph:
"The substrate (presumed to be peat; see the discussion under "Substrates" on page 135 for more information) should be damp enough to hold its shape after being squeezed in the hand, but dry enough that no liquid water can be squeezed from it. "
This would mean that stan is NOT suggesting we keep T. Blondi in standing water, as per the name "Swamp Dweller" would suggest. This seems perfectly reasonable to me, the devil is in the details, boys.
most Brachypelma's, Grammostola's, and aphonopelma's and such can and should be kept with just a water bowl over filled, as these are usually pretty arid and dry species.
By no means are experienced people on here suggesting that you keep, say, a T. Blondi the same way.
and lets not get into things like Asian OW's and such. the fact is though, 90% of the posts on here, are usually from New Tarantula Owners, who usually all have some type of beginner arid species(brachy,grammy, ETC) who was told they need to mist their tank several times a Week, with no ventilation, by some inexperienced petco employee who's never spent more then 5 minutes with a tarantula.
and many people have already pointed out MANY of the issues the book has already.
nobody is saying that the book is garbage or anything, but much like you have pointed out about this website, the book has some problems.
the only difference? this website has people posting daily sharing their experiences. the book? well we are still waiting for the 4th edition.
PS: what does you running linux have to do with the information on this website?
the websites information is improved: people are posting literally by the minute on here, and more and more information is being added, with very little posts being deleted(that are not already copies of other threads at this point)
The website itself is being enhanced: you should have seen it years ago. there have been so many changes, to the formatting, to the style and theme. there have been changes to the structure of the website itself, and so forth.
and again, updated?: literally, minute by minute updates by individual keepers and enthusiasts. as good as the book is, it is based off of 1 mans Experiences and knowledge. this is a website filled with literally thousands of keepers collective experience.
and yes the book is filed with some "heated" debates.
one of which being the ICU. i for one can confirm that the ICU is not always the best thing. after reading the TKG when i first started keeping T's, i had a T show the exact signs mentioned in the book, and the book explained to put it in an ICU. 2 days later my E. Pachypus was dead. now I'm not saying it was strictly from the ICU, but it happens to be ironic that everybody seems to be in agreeance that ICU's do more harm then good with Arid/Dry species, and my Arid/Dry species died while in the ICU.
also ironic, when i had a similar situation this past summer happen, and i took the advised of the users on here and did NOT put it in the ICU, instead giving water directly to her mouth and putting her over a water source, 3 days later she was back to webbing up her Enclosure just fine.