Tarcan
10-21-03, 10:29 PM
Hi All, here are the reasons why I HATE vermiculite and strongly believe it is the worst possible substrate...
1) Tarantulas do not live on vermiculite in nature! This is an artificial product, why not use something natural for your animal...
2) IT IS REALLY EXTREMELY UGLY!LOL OK, do not worry, the real objective reasons will come soon...
3) Vermiculite has a very irritating and toxic dust that gets into the book lungs of spiderlings. This blocks the lungs and the spider suffocate to death. I have whitnessed this myself and collected many similar experiences from other hobbyists that did not realize it was because of this but when I mentionned that to them, they were quite fast to acknowledge (all similar ways of dying)... specially Avicularia spp. spiderlings are fragile to this... the spider will never climb and constantly "scratch" it's abdomen... will refuse to eat and one day you find it dead all the legs under the abdomen... I have seen one of my Megaphobema mesomelas spiderling convulse just prior to dying, a very sad and disturbing sight I can tell you. I have lost a lot of spiderlings because of this substrate... on top of that, I am allergic to vermiculite, I scratch myself for at least 4 to 5 days when I use it, so I can only imagine what it can be to "live" on vermiculite 24 hours a day... poor little spiders...
4) Vermiculite has a great tendency to retain moisture... a quality that can be bad... It is harder to visually monitor the degree of humidity of vermiculite then peat moss or soil for exemple... a dry vermiculite substrate will actually dry even more the surrounding air of the enclosure because it has such a great affinity to moisture... not a big deal you tell me... in case of a spiderlings, it can easily prove to be fatal... since they are very fragile to dehydration...
5) People that use vermiculite argues that it helps to not have mites in the enclosure because it is artificial... for having examined a lot of other hobbysist's set ups that use vermiculite, I can tell you that the mites are there and it is not true... just a lot more difficult to spot that's all but quite easy when you know exactly waht you are looking for and when to look for them! Since they are pretty much the same color of the substrate (the mites)... an unexperienced hobbysist will eventually only notice the mites when the outburst it huge, sometimes too late for the spiderling... remember that it is very often the food items that carries the mites, so vermiculite or not, if you do not clean up, the mites will eventually proliferate... another thing on that subject, people that use too big enclosures for spiderlings will have problem seeing if the pinheads have been eaten or not since they are similar in color to the substrate...
6) Borrowing species hate vermiculite... they will sometimes get used to it but it is rare, it is no good for digging and having a solid burrow. None of my Asian species ever constructed burrows when I had tried it... all burrowed within one or two weeks after putting them back on a natural substrate...
This is based on personnal experience, I have lost a lot of valuable animals because of this substrate (I can think of right now 1 X M. mesomelas, 2 X P. subfusca, quite a few C. fimbriatus, etc. the list goes on...). Why risk it happening when you can use some very nice and efficient natural substrate.
I would just like to finish that if you want to insist to continue to use this substrate, remember to always soak it before putting it in the enclosure, it helps reducing the toxic dust... and also remember that i warned you... good luck
Martin
1) Tarantulas do not live on vermiculite in nature! This is an artificial product, why not use something natural for your animal...
2) IT IS REALLY EXTREMELY UGLY!LOL OK, do not worry, the real objective reasons will come soon...
3) Vermiculite has a very irritating and toxic dust that gets into the book lungs of spiderlings. This blocks the lungs and the spider suffocate to death. I have whitnessed this myself and collected many similar experiences from other hobbyists that did not realize it was because of this but when I mentionned that to them, they were quite fast to acknowledge (all similar ways of dying)... specially Avicularia spp. spiderlings are fragile to this... the spider will never climb and constantly "scratch" it's abdomen... will refuse to eat and one day you find it dead all the legs under the abdomen... I have seen one of my Megaphobema mesomelas spiderling convulse just prior to dying, a very sad and disturbing sight I can tell you. I have lost a lot of spiderlings because of this substrate... on top of that, I am allergic to vermiculite, I scratch myself for at least 4 to 5 days when I use it, so I can only imagine what it can be to "live" on vermiculite 24 hours a day... poor little spiders...
4) Vermiculite has a great tendency to retain moisture... a quality that can be bad... It is harder to visually monitor the degree of humidity of vermiculite then peat moss or soil for exemple... a dry vermiculite substrate will actually dry even more the surrounding air of the enclosure because it has such a great affinity to moisture... not a big deal you tell me... in case of a spiderlings, it can easily prove to be fatal... since they are very fragile to dehydration...
5) People that use vermiculite argues that it helps to not have mites in the enclosure because it is artificial... for having examined a lot of other hobbysist's set ups that use vermiculite, I can tell you that the mites are there and it is not true... just a lot more difficult to spot that's all but quite easy when you know exactly waht you are looking for and when to look for them! Since they are pretty much the same color of the substrate (the mites)... an unexperienced hobbysist will eventually only notice the mites when the outburst it huge, sometimes too late for the spiderling... remember that it is very often the food items that carries the mites, so vermiculite or not, if you do not clean up, the mites will eventually proliferate... another thing on that subject, people that use too big enclosures for spiderlings will have problem seeing if the pinheads have been eaten or not since they are similar in color to the substrate...
6) Borrowing species hate vermiculite... they will sometimes get used to it but it is rare, it is no good for digging and having a solid burrow. None of my Asian species ever constructed burrows when I had tried it... all burrowed within one or two weeks after putting them back on a natural substrate...
This is based on personnal experience, I have lost a lot of valuable animals because of this substrate (I can think of right now 1 X M. mesomelas, 2 X P. subfusca, quite a few C. fimbriatus, etc. the list goes on...). Why risk it happening when you can use some very nice and efficient natural substrate.
I would just like to finish that if you want to insist to continue to use this substrate, remember to always soak it before putting it in the enclosure, it helps reducing the toxic dust... and also remember that i warned you... good luck
Martin