Desert hairy hiding places ?

i want to know if i should provide my desert hairy with hiding places or will he be able to make his own? the sand is not the best material but i read something about compacting the sand? can anyone explain the process for me?

I am new to it too, but I have a hiding spot for mine and he digs up the sand kicking it around everywhere.

But to compact it you need excavtor sand, mix it with water, and dig your own burrow then let it dry for a few days with a heat source on it to get rid of the humidity, that is how it seems to be done by people on this forum sounds about right to me

Yeah if you've got it on loose sand a hide will be enough but I think they prefer to build their own burrows in the wetted, compacted, dried sand. They'll make extensive tunnels, pretty much always reaching the side of the tank so you won't stop seeing them. They like their tunnels so much they'll enjoy scaring you by hiding in them for months at a time haha

Mine is lazy so I start his tunnels off for him and he just makes them more fitting.

About compacting the sand. I spray it until it's really wet, mould it into whatever I want, then bake it under a 75W infrared bulb. Works a treat. One problem though is I use that excavator stuff, so the area I've sprayed turns into a rock when It's dry. That's not a joke either, I was doing a bit of a rehash of his tank last night and I could literally pick up his tunnels.

So if you want to custom build a tunnel use ex sand, if it all gets hard then how is he going to continue digging or whatever?

Do you use a different kind of sand along with the exc sand so that he can dig freely?

Trust me they will dig through even the hardest of substrates. When I first set up my Haddy tank I used 100% excavator clay and like above was rock hard but my Haddy still dug deep burrows to the corner of the tank and shes got mycosis on both front legs!

Digging her back out after a month of hiding was another story lol

I've found a 50/50% mix of normal sand and ex clay to be a good mix of the burrow holding well and being easy for them to burrow into.

Quick pic of the burrow in rock hard pure ex-clay substrate (noticed how thin the ceiling to the burrow is and it always stayed like that) with my Haddy with mycosis foot shown.

ugh yeah thats the other nightmare is cleaning the damn enclosure after a few months :/

did your scorpion dig that particular hole or did you do that one and he just added to it?

BTW how long has your desert hairy had mycosis? that is bad for it right? they are black spots right? i dont tghink mine has it, i took the water bowl out a bit ago and have had a infrared lamp over its enclosure for a while now

Shouldn't have to clean the enclosure really because of how dry it should be so there's no problems with mites and things just spot clean what you can see. Reason I dug it up was because I hadn't seen her for over a month!

Yea she dug this. First she burrowed in under the piece of bark you can see above. Then made an entrance out the back of it, then this one towards the front of the glass so there was 3 entrances and like a main room bit.

She's had the mycosis since I got her, I didn't really know about it then (and still don't really). Yea its the black on the end of the front leg. I've kept her bone dry and warm and it hasn't spread one bit and doesn't seem to affect her at all.

I always wanted mine to dig a tunnel kinda like ants to where I can see them lol
when i get my new glass enclosure ill be decking it out soon enough.

I want to put a live cactus in there how would that work out seeing how I often to water it every so often, i know it stores water, but it needs water in order to store it..