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<blockquote data-quote="Steph1304" data-source="post: 206954" data-attributes="member: 38180"><p>Hi again and thanks for all your lovely welcomes and very helpful replies!</p><p></p><p>Temperature-wise I was going to mount the heatpad on the inside back of the cabinet rather than the tanks - the shop was out of stock for cable heating. So I hoped the pad and a thermostat would help to maintain a temperature of around 24C in the cabinet. On the papers I've been reading I've seen recommendations for C versicolor ranging as high as 28C but I hoped that if the spiders were cooler they could move towards the back of the tank and move towards the front if they were too warm. By monitoring their behaviour I would then tweak the temperature accordingly. I'm also now debating whether to drill some additional ventilation holes in the cabinet. It's certainly not an airtight unit, but I guess I will need to balance maintaining the ambient temperature with the humidity. Too many holes all the heat would pour out and the heating pad would kick in more often, too few and I run the risk of too humid. I get the point made about the water bowl and much of the stuff I've read tends to recommend making sure they have sufficient water for moulting, but not to go mad with misting the versicolor to avoid sudden death.</p><p></p><p>We have a similar issue to DustyD with the room temperature dropping as low as 16 - 18C at night and although my office is the warmest room in the house, reaching 20 - 21.5 C during the day (or 19C if my husband walks past the thermostat ) it tends to be a house where we all wear hoodies, sweatshirts or jumpers rather than tshirts! </p><p></p><p>Thanks for the feedback on the plants too. All the plants will be plastic coated so I can rinse them under the tap or sterilise them if needed. I avoided silk flowers as I figured they could get manky quickly.</p><p></p><p>I've attached a picture of the cabinet below and a picture of the tanks too. As I mentioned previously the room is dark. It has 2 small windows, but the next door neighbours house is just on the other side of the drive and I have the venetian blinds closed almost permanently so anyone walking up the drive cannot see who is on my computer screen (client confidentiality as I work in psychology). I also prrsonally don't like bright lighting, I have a dim ceiling bulb and a couple of desk lamps but that's it - so the green lights during the day and red at night were planned to give the spiders some form of circadian rhythm, and to allow me to monitor them while sitting at my desk without having to disturb them by opening the cabinet doors to check on them. I figured the green lights would also be closest to the type of light they would experience in the wild.</p><p></p><p>The utility room next to my office is cold, as it has no heating in there and it has a catflap, so I'm hoping to store the live food in there? The guy at the shop said to keep the crickets and worms somewhere dark and cool, so I'm hoping in a cupboard in there will be ok? The utility is usually around 15 - 16C although sometimes considerably cooler in winter, I've been reading up on gut loading but no doubt I'll be asking more questions on keeping the live food under optimim conditions soon!</p><p></p><p>Thank you again for all your advice, it is very gratefully received!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Steph1304, post: 206954, member: 38180"] Hi again and thanks for all your lovely welcomes and very helpful replies! Temperature-wise I was going to mount the heatpad on the inside back of the cabinet rather than the tanks - the shop was out of stock for cable heating. So I hoped the pad and a thermostat would help to maintain a temperature of around 24C in the cabinet. On the papers I've been reading I've seen recommendations for C versicolor ranging as high as 28C but I hoped that if the spiders were cooler they could move towards the back of the tank and move towards the front if they were too warm. By monitoring their behaviour I would then tweak the temperature accordingly. I'm also now debating whether to drill some additional ventilation holes in the cabinet. It's certainly not an airtight unit, but I guess I will need to balance maintaining the ambient temperature with the humidity. Too many holes all the heat would pour out and the heating pad would kick in more often, too few and I run the risk of too humid. I get the point made about the water bowl and much of the stuff I've read tends to recommend making sure they have sufficient water for moulting, but not to go mad with misting the versicolor to avoid sudden death. We have a similar issue to DustyD with the room temperature dropping as low as 16 - 18C at night and although my office is the warmest room in the house, reaching 20 - 21.5 C during the day (or 19C if my husband walks past the thermostat ) it tends to be a house where we all wear hoodies, sweatshirts or jumpers rather than tshirts! Thanks for the feedback on the plants too. All the plants will be plastic coated so I can rinse them under the tap or sterilise them if needed. I avoided silk flowers as I figured they could get manky quickly. I've attached a picture of the cabinet below and a picture of the tanks too. As I mentioned previously the room is dark. It has 2 small windows, but the next door neighbours house is just on the other side of the drive and I have the venetian blinds closed almost permanently so anyone walking up the drive cannot see who is on my computer screen (client confidentiality as I work in psychology). I also prrsonally don't like bright lighting, I have a dim ceiling bulb and a couple of desk lamps but that's it - so the green lights during the day and red at night were planned to give the spiders some form of circadian rhythm, and to allow me to monitor them while sitting at my desk without having to disturb them by opening the cabinet doors to check on them. I figured the green lights would also be closest to the type of light they would experience in the wild. The utility room next to my office is cold, as it has no heating in there and it has a catflap, so I'm hoping to store the live food in there? The guy at the shop said to keep the crickets and worms somewhere dark and cool, so I'm hoping in a cupboard in there will be ok? The utility is usually around 15 - 16C although sometimes considerably cooler in winter, I've been reading up on gut loading but no doubt I'll be asking more questions on keeping the live food under optimim conditions soon! Thank you again for all your advice, it is very gratefully received! [/QUOTE]
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