thank you for replying! the mesh is covered mostly with foil tape already but I will ad more. do you know anything about things i could change in the substrate that might work better?

im glad that the 'guarding' type behavior is normal

I am comfortable with how cluttered it is other than maybe adding one more piece of branch or foliage, occasionally he will explore around at night when it gets closer to feeding day but hes pretty quiet other than the occasional hide swaps haha