naturalistic vivaria and molting surfaces for Damon diadema

Aquarimax

Arachnoprince
Old Timer
Joined
Mar 1, 2014
Messages
1,087
I am thoroughly enjoying my trio of juvenile Damon diadema. They have each molted twice, since I got them in early June, and seem to be thriving. I started breeding crickets, in part to better feed them, as pet shops in my area rarely stock appropriately-sized crickets. Now I've got hundreds. :)

They are currently housed communally in a 2.5 gallon tank with a slanted cork wall. In the foreseeable future, though, they will need larger accommodations.
Here are my two questions:

Can I house them in a planted, naturalistic vivarium? I have two concerns: 1. The lighting needed to accommodate the plants would bother the D. diadema.
2. The plant life would provide too many hiding places for prey items--reducing the amount of food they eat and, worse, making it more likely that they would be attacked by a hungry cricket during a molt.
 

edgeofthefreak

Arachno-titled!
Old Timer
Joined
Apr 2, 2012
Messages
496
I worry about these concerns too. I only have one juvenile D. diadema, and I want to eventually give her a full 18x18x24H Exo-terra. Initially I wanted to have low light plants (pothos comes to mind), and lots of surfaces for climbing/molting/etc.

Started to build her next upgrade enclosure using natural cork, and there are hundreds of places that crickets can hide in. And this a fairly small piece of cork. The hiding of crickets bothers me less than having them die inside those cork pieces. In the wild, plenty of scavengers would find those dead crix, but there are certainly less of them available in our enclosures.

Her most recent upgrade is more what I'm leaning towards going forth. Plenty of climbing surfaces, but very little places for crix to hide. I can actually feed the crix with little bottle caps of water/food. Removed when the crickets find their way into her mouthparts. Future structures will be built by me, instead of found at Michael's.


Conclusion?: the aesthetics are much more for me than for her, and she seems to be able to hunt very easily in this simplistic style. I'm starting to get into Dart Frogs, and they not only will appreciate the effort of a naturalistic viv, but they'll properly benefit from it as well.
 
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