One square foot of Peruvian Amazonia - tarantula build

[plateOfFlan]

I meant to make some posts on this terrarium as I was doing it but I'm a good chunk of the way through already with no posts, so I'll catch everyone up I guess.

My very favorite tarantula in my collection is a Thrixopelma ockerti (Peruvian Flame Rump) named Typhon. She's a confirmed female and I've had her for about a year now. (no pics of her until the end, in case you're arachnophobic!) I originally saw "Peru" and assumed she was from an arid area, but have since learned she (well, her species, she's captive bred from the US) hails from a temperate montane rainforest on the inland side of the Andes. This area is extremely wet and experiences periodic flooding. Since she's expected to live around 15 years I figured I would start building her a nice bioactive terrarium that resembles her homeland and will be a permanent adult enclosure for her.
Bioactive isn't a great choice for most tarantula species but I had 2 main motivators:
1) as mentioned she's from a wet area. Tarantulas can get by with a lot of water sealed in their exoskeleton, so the humidity requirements can be skirted for awhile by offering them plenty of drinking water. Typhon drinks a lot of water and it makes me feel a little guilty that she's not an ideal environment. To crank her humidity would cause a lot of mold issues though, so she needs that cleanup crew and all to prevent mold buildup.
2) Typhon is an absolute pig. I don't know if this is a species thing or just an individual one but I've never seen a tarantula that was so gross and messy. All my other spiders tidy up their lairs regularly, wrap any debris in webs and carry it out for me to easily remove. Typhon will eat half a roach, toss the other half under a cork bark where I can't get to it, and she's very territorial so any attempt to reach after it with tongs is met with fierce resistance. I finally managed to clear her lair out and found 3 molts and several headless feeders, everything stuck together with webbing and tarantula poop. I'm hoping having detritovores to clean up after her will help her be less disgusting!

I ordered a 12 x 12 x 18 exo terra, added 8 quarts of bioactive substrate, sheet moss, and some club moss (off theme since it's from Africa but .. come on look how cute it is!), seeded springtails and dwarf white isopods, and left everything to cycle for a month. I sprayed the moss several times a day to sustain it until it could grow new roots and get settled. On youtube people will dump everything into the tank all at once and then introduce the primary inhabitant right there, but my understanding, going off guides from here *, is that the tank needs to cycle much like an aquarium. The little lady is just going to need to wait a few months for it to be ready. It'll also be much easier to change things around or remove and replace dead plants without a venomous and territorial tenant around!
Lighting is provided by a plant-growing LED with visible-spectrum light only, since UV isn't needed by arachnids and may actually be harmful to them. No extra heating is needed since my room is always around 70F.

Chihuahua for scale:


Adding bugs:


Moss and leaves on top:


The lady herself (after being particularly rude to me and attempting an escape):


I think she's excited about what's going on next door.



* https://www.neherpetoculture.com/viv...onstruction101
* https://www.neherpetoculture.com/viv...onstruction102