Hadrurus substrate question.

Im gonna be gettin a Hadrurus Arizonensis in the next few days and im just drying out some sand for its substrate but its quite course, sharp builders sand which puts wee scuff marks on the plastic tubs im drying it in, is this safe for them or will i just grind down their cuticle, the reason im using it is cuase there was a 20kg bag of it in my garden and im not gonna spend a tenner for 4 kilos of calci sand!

it should be fine.. thy are used to burrowing in harsh soils.

Kids play sand is good, and its cheap! There could be other materials in the builders sand making it unsuitable, but i may be wrong

I use kids sand or silver sand, never had a problem with either and both cheap

Although I have brought this up sooooo many times lately lol, mix 1 part bentonite clay with 14 parts sand (or composite substrate) Once it dries the substrate is solid enough not to collapse and brittle enough to be dug away by the scorpion. fantastic stuff

another plus is that if you want to reuse the substrate, just wet it down and you can remould it again. I swear by the stuff now.

the only thing thats in the sand other than sand is tiny wee stones but i suppose they live in pebbly sand in the wild so its sound i was just worried about how abrasive it is eh

Why use sand at all? i had my H.spadix couple in a substrate i made, Sand/soil/vermeculite/leafs/gravel..

Its not natural with just sand. Btw, my Androctonus australis / tunisia (all 40 of them) i use minimum of sand to them, most of it is soil (maybe 80/20 - soil/sand)..
Gives them the chance of digging, and digging to a bit more humid place when needed.

Sounds like a good idea if kept dry!

hmmm spose ill do that then its gonna be a pain to break up the big brick of coco fibre i have into poweder by hand lol

soak it in water then once its expanded and crumbled, leave it to dry. Coir dosnt take long to dry out at all

yeah but it needs to be dry by tomorrow cause thats when the scorps arriving. it doesnt take long to powder the bricks by hand anyways just makes ur hands tired

didnt know it was possible it break it by hand and i'd assume you'd get a fraction of the ammount of substrate doing it that way as opposed to soaking it.

If you squeeze it out and spread it out flat it should dry quickly

You can speed up the drying by layering it flat (as Kuma said) and then sticking it in a low-temperature oven.

Kuma wrote:

didnt know it was possible it break it by hand and i'd assume you'd get a fraction of the ammount of substrate doing it that way as opposed to soaking it.

If you squeeze it out and spread it out flat it should dry quickly

Nah alll u need to do it break a wee bit off then rub it in ur hand till its all broken up also filters out any long stringy bits the factory missed

sounds like hard work! lol

it is likes but what would you rtaher do have it down in 5 mins or wait all day for it to dry out lol its pretty mingin when it squeaks too makes ye cringe! bit like cotton wool does lol

ovens busted ¬_¬ somehow

I use sterilized river loam. Compacts & is movable like sand. Kim