Water dish issue

[grayzone]

Any little bit of substrate on the lip of the bowl can wick water out of the bowl and into the substrate below.

lol 2 funny... i used to be STUMPED at how my ceramic water dish would drain over nite... damn coco fiber... all it takes is a tiny piece half in the bowl half on the other substrate and bye bye water... i actually used to think my parahybana drank that much in a nite... lol..

 

[lord lionheart]

Seems I fixed the issue by removing the bowl and cleaning it a third or maybe even fourth time, thus removing any substrate wich was wicking water from both bowls. It was just weird how it happened with both bowls in one tank under exact same conditions as neighboring tanks which maintained full water dishes.
It was a process of elimination, my theories varied from a ninja, dipsomaniac tarantula to a leaking bowl

 

[grayzone]

damn ninja tarantulas. y are they so thirsty lol.

 

[OphidianDelight]

Home-made dishes seem to work better for me. I have experienced mixed performances from store-brand dishes. Exoterra's dishes perform the best, but are expensive compared to pill bottle lids and milk caps. Zoomed and superpet use some sort of plastic-foam that seems to vanish the water faster than evaporation, like the OP stated. If you MUST have a store-brand product, I almost always recommend Exoterra for quality but it does cost more. Home-made is the way to go, especially with large collections. Who has hundreds of dollars to spend on water dishes when you have 50+ tarantulas to hydrate?

 

[Brachymania]

I just cleaned them all out again for the 5th time. There wasn't any substrate or webbing and they still leaked. Again I took them out, dried them off, filled them up, and put them on a dinner plate. The water did not seep through. I would use bottle caps and the such but my T's tip them over maybe 10 mins after i put them in. :wall: