Another Day, another 1/4″.

Today is Wednesday, which in my world is feeding day (As is Saturday and sometimes Sunday.) All the little spiderlings are brought down to the floor in their jars, deli cups, and now a kritter keeper. I stack my 2 small roach keepers, and place an empty potato salad cup on top. I bring down all my tools: Metal and plastic tweezers, empty film container, paint brush, flash light etc.

One by one, each tiny deli cup (2 L. parahybana slings and 1 B. boehmei sling) is placed in the larger potato salad cup so that when I open the lid for feeding, the spiderlings can’t escape far if they get out. I then retrieve a small cricket from the small cricket tank, and put it in the film container. I gently crack open each lid (one at a time) and lay it on top of its container. I then grab the isolated cricket with the tweezers, and plop it into the opened spiderling deli cup.

Tonight I found that one of my L. parahybana had molted. It was Raven, and I have been expecting this for about 2 weeks now. FINALLY!!

She has also grown from a tiny 1/8″ to a monstrous 1/4″!! WHOOOO!!

As for the rest of the feeding process, the other spiderlings are in jars so I am able to keep their lids off during feeding. Serj (A. chalcodes) looks a lot like my Nhandu sp. since yesterdays molt, but I am fairly certain that she will get her Arizona blond markings soon enough.

Tank (Aphonopelma sp.) has not been eating, so I expect his gummy physique to molt out as well in the next week or 2.

So, tonight marked the 3rd molt of September, and everyone was fed pretty well. Sid (my A. avicularia) tried to climb out of his tank while I grabbed a cricket! It was pretty cool watching those little pink toes come up over the edge! I managed to toss him a cricket, which appeared to land right in his fangs. Way to fetch Sid!! He’s a good boy 🙂

I even updated everyone’s note cards with acquisition dates, molt dates and LS”. All 12 have cards now, and I am exhausted. Luckily for me though, not everyone needed to be fed. Besides the newly molted, I busted Isis with a giant B. dubia roach in her mouth last night. It was one of the left overs that lives in her soil from my deceased colony. I have a few left in some of the jars, and even catch them from time to time eating the remains of crickets not consumed by the spiderlings. They must be eating well because this sucker was bigger than the snacker herself!! (Her abdomen at least) and I know it wasn’t that big when I put it in there several months ago!

Feeding day was a success, and even though I am tired from a long day at work, and then an hour of feeding/record keeping/blogging, I am happy to finally be getting the rhythm of this invertebrate keeping down. Spider checks in the morning, and in the evening, with Giant Cockroach checks at some point after work.

I am now ready for bed.

My Tarantula is Molting! (therealowner.com)

Holding a spiderling

Aphrodite is the first tarantula spiderling I got from my wish list. I have had her for about a month, and she is a rather tiny 1/4″. Since I got her, she has refused all food, but I thought I would give it another go this evening. I figured that I would try a near dying cricket, as opposed to the freshly killed ones I usually give my spiderlings. I found, however, that this particular cricket was not as near dead as I had hoped, and that it was a little bit bigger than I had anticipated.

So, I opened the deli cup once more, and when the cricket finally jumped out, Aphrodite went missing! I panicked A LOT on the inside, but remained physically calm, eyeballing the container in which all small deli cups sit when being opened for feeding ( a practice I use for cases like this…)

I slowly turned my hand over, and there was my precious Boehmei, sitting right in my palm! I stared at her for a few minutes, and gently coerced her back into her deli cup with the butt end of a pair of tweezers. She is absolutely beautiful, and safe with a very dead cricket.

C. fasciatum first meal- Dancing!

Day 5: Sid and the Web/Feeding Time

Sid’s web has been destroyed. I noticed it this morning during my daily Tarantula check. She has been hanging out on the sides of her tank for the past week or so, but I had no idea that she had destroyed her home!

EEEEK!! All this after I threw 3 deliciously plump crickets into her lair. Humph. She hasn’t been eating well, and has not seemed to care about the roaches i was trying to give her. She just molted, and isn’t due for another one for a couple of months. I guess I will wait and see what happens.

Isis, on the other hand, fully enjoyed a roach last night. I had the idea to use the nifty 35mm cartridge to rattle the roaches up a bit. (For some reason, this seems less horrible than cutting them up..)

Serj also seemed to notice her roach, but just sat by it for a while. I couldn’t tell if she had eaten it or not.

Tank-well……. no luck yet, as far as I saw. She just sits on the side of her cup. I think she is not liking the coconut fiber substrate. Oh well….it’s all we have for now.

I thought over the maggot food idea, and decided against the potential colony of flies. Nothing against flies, but my apartment is not suited for a bug room yet, nor do we have a shed.

For now, all 5 tarantulas are living on my desk in the livingroom. It is set into the wall, so they aren’t hit with constant bright lights. (They wouldn’t be, anyway, due to the fact that we live like cave dwellers as it is.)