Vinegaroon enclosures and behavior

[msburgundy]

I was wondering how most people keep their vinegaroon setups, like I know some people have a lot of plants and other decorations in there, and how it affects behavior.

I keep mine pretty plain, she has a couple cork bark hides but she usually buries them and incorporates it as part of her burrow, and then digs a lot of very deep and intricate tunnels and walks around a lot on the surface. The rationale there was basically that with how poorly they see, she'd get around more easily with less to obstruct her.

The standard I tend to use is that you should give an animal the opportunity to display all its natural behaviors, and if you're seeing them that means the animal is doing well. But now I'm wondering if maybe she digs so much because the hides on the surface are inadequate.

As I understand it, it's pretty normal for them to rearrange their enclosure and move all the substrate around so I never took it for a potential sign of distress but does anyone else who keeps their enclosures differently see the same level of activity?

 

[CRX]

I've never kept a vinegaroon but from what I know they are extremely fossorial animals, spending months at a time underground. Some keepers have said they "hibernate" for up to 5 months.

 

[msburgundy]

Mine was down for almost 6 months I think, like December to late May. They spend so much time underground that even if you're expecting it, you still end up afraid they're dead

I've seen people keep them on a shallower substrate with more hides but that just feels....kinda mean to me. Mine frequently spends 5-8 hours a night just moving dirt around lol

Although to be fair, I don't actually know how much the Florida variety burrows. I used to live in FL but never saw them, I think where I lived was too wet.

I wonder if there's anyone on here who's been able to observe M. floridanus in the wild that might have any insight as to their behavior in that environment.

 

[Smotzer]

How you have them set up sounds fine, they should have ample room to burrow being obligate fossorials and then have a surface hide that that can chose to start their burrows from underneath and hunt from. As long as they have deep moist substrate and they are doing well then it’s not so important what else they have as far as live plants, not a necessity. I have some that have planted enclosures and I have quite a few that are on just plain topsoil with a piece of corkbark and some live oak leaves and nothing else.

If you post pictures of your enclosure(s) I can better assist in making sure that nothings amiss!