Enclosure question for GBB

[laservet]

I bought my sling and my enclosure from Jamie's Tarantulas. I decorated the enclosure with everything that came with it, cork bark hide, plastic plant, dried moss. Before Its first molt it spent most of its time hiding in a crevice between two of the plastic leaves. After its molt it spends most of its time on top of the cork bark hide and on top of the ball of moss.

Is this enclosure too busy? The ones I've seen in the online feeding videos are pretty stark. There are a couple of red runners that weren't eaten that have grown as large as Phobia despite the apparent lack of food I can't catch without pulling everything out. The sling isn't very aggressive. I have to crush the head of the roach so it won't escape into all the hiding places and drop it in front of the sling to get it to feed.

It seems to me feeding would be much easier if the environment were not so rich. If it were just substrate and one plastic leaf for a hide I could drop the pinhead roaches in uninjured and they could run around until the sling eats them and it would be easy to remove uneaten food.

OTOH it's starting to web across the top of the cork bark hide and the ball of dried moss and is currently cruising all over the enclosure so it doesn't seem to be suffering. With reptiles like my Blue Tongue Skink a rich environment is thought to be important for their well being. And it gives the sling all kinds of places to hide but I don't know if that's important enough to override the pain in the azz it presents for feeding.

The rogue roaches I may eventually catch and since they aren't crickets I'm not concerned they will eat the sling. They won't, will they?

Photo attached, thoughts and advice appreciated.

 

[viper69]

Take out the moss, gives it more space. Make dish flush with sub, they aren't going to use it as frequently setup like that.

 

[The Grym Reaper]

The rogue roaches I may eventually catch and since they aren't crickets I'm not concerned they will eat the sling. They won't, will they?

Red runners cannibalise so I wouldn't risk leaving them in there as they could decide to nibble on your T.

 

[laservet]

Thanks, Viper and Reaper. The dried moss removal proved more disruptive than I had anticipated due to its friable nature and the impressive tenacity of the seemingly minimal webbing. At that point the T was cowering in a corner so I figured in for a dime in for a dollar and pulled everything out. Turns out there were five B lateralis living in there. All gone.

At this time I only have the cork bark in the enclosure along with the water dish now flush with the surface of the substrate. The sprig of plastic plant is too large to fit. Should I omit it? Cut off a couple leaves and stick them in the right rear corner next to the cork hide? (see pic)

As traumatic as this appeared to be, Phobia left its corner and was crawling around the enclosure within a couple minutes. Exploring or trying to find a way out, I assume.

I'm not trying to be anal about it, just want to get the husbandry right. 95% of the medical problems I find in my herp patients are due to improper husbandry and I don't want to make a similar mistake.

 

[cold blood]

Leave the plant in....it will use the anchor points.

 

[laservet]

Leave the plant in....it will use the anchor points.

I can cut it in half and use one sprig in the right rear and another in the right front.

 

[Enrgy]

I can cut it in half and use one sprig in the right rear and another in the right front.

whichever way u want bro its all preference at the end of the day.

 

[Raptor]

Looks great! Congrats on your new GBB!! They're the best!

Like the previous comments, just remove the moss, make the water dish substrate level, put the leaves in-- she'll use them to anchor her web.

Enjoy!

 

[laservet]

Thanks for all the advice.

I put the sling in a Tupperware container while I redid the enclosure. I wound up cutting the plastic plant into a couple pieces, used a hot glue gun to attach them to the bottom of the enclosure. I tied the stems of each set of leaves together with fine suture material and a dab from the hot glue gun to keep the leaves upright.

I took the cork hide, snapped it in half, then cut one half on a diagonal so the sling would have a hide but there would be no place for a roach to hide. That gave two bunches of leaves and the top of the bark hide to attach web, the other corner has the mostly flush water container.

The cocoa husk substrate was too fluffy to tamp down so I moistened it and tamped it into place. I then baked the moisture out of it by setting it on top of my espresso machine, took a couple of days before it was nice and dry.

Through all this I was concerned that the sling would be stressed sitting in the bottom of the Tupperware container but I dropped a pinhead B lateralis in and she ate it, ate another 48 hours later.

I put her back in her newly renovated home and after taking a spin around the place she settled down under one of the leaves. The second night she ate another roach.

Here's a pic of her new digs. Ignore the lamp base in the background.



The only problem is this:



Last night I found her sitting in her 1/3 full water dish. She wasn't floating on the surface like one would expect with surface tension so I guess her hairs had finally saturated. I thought she was dead, fished her out by scooping underneath her with some forceps and she wiggled away. Initially she was clumped with cocoa husk but it dropped off almost immediately and within sixty seconds she was back near her spot under the leaf with her front legs up on the side of the enclosure.

She didn't have access to water for three days while I was doing her house but the two roaches should have given her enough water that she wouldn't have been dehydrated. She took a drink when I first put her back in the enclosure, too, so I can't imagine she would need to soak for any reason. She's only molted once, went two months without eating before the molt, so I can't imagine she is going to molt again because her abdomen isn't as large relative to the rest of her body as it was when she stopped eating prior to her molt. And she just ate. Unless their premolt behavior can change that drastically from one molt to the next.

This evening she is back in her water container, this time on her back. I think I saw her move a bit but maybe it was my imagination. I'm not going to disturb her in case she is molting. If she's trying to commit suicide I don't want to interfere, either. Sheesh! She obviously wants to be in the water so I'll just let it play out.

Any ideas?

 

[Raptor]

Thanks for all the advice.

I put the sling in a Tupperware container while I redid the enclosure. I wound up cutting the plastic plant into a couple pieces, used a hot glue gun to attach them to the bottom of the enclosure. I tied the stems of each set of leaves together with fine suture material and a dab from the hot glue gun to keep the leaves upright.

I took the cork hide, snapped it in half, then cut one half on a diagonal so the sling would have a hide but there would be no place for a roach to hide. That gave two bunches of leaves and the top of the bark hide to attach web, the other corner has the mostly flush water container.

The cocoa husk substrate was too fluffy to tamp down so I moistened it and tamped it into place. I then baked the moisture out of it by setting it on top of my espresso machine, took a couple of days before it was nice and dry.

Through all this I was concerned that the sling would be stressed sitting in the bottom of the Tupperware container but I dropped a pinhead B lateralis in and she ate it, ate another 48 hours later.

I put her back in her newly renovated home and after taking a spin around the place she settled down under one of the leaves. The second night she ate another roach.

Here's a pic of her new digs. Ignore the lamp base in the background.

View attachment 290256

The only problem is this:

View attachment 290257

Last night I found her sitting in her 1/3 full water dish. She wasn't floating on the surface like one would expect with surface tension so I guess her hairs had finally saturated. I thought she was dead, fished her out by scooping underneath her with some forceps and she wiggled away. Initially she was clumped with cocoa husk but it dropped off almost immediately and within sixty seconds she was back near her spot under the leaf with her front legs up on the side of the enclosure.

She didn't have access to water for three days while I was doing her house but the two roaches should have given her enough water that she wouldn't have been dehydrated. She took a drink when I first put her back in the enclosure, too, so I can't imagine she would need to soak for any reason. She's only molted once, went two months without eating before the molt, so I can't imagine she is going to molt again because her abdomen isn't as large relative to the rest of her body as it was when she stopped eating prior to her molt. And she just ate. Unless their premolt behavior can change that drastically from one molt to the next.

This evening she is back in her water container, this time on her back. I think I saw her move a bit but maybe it was my imagination. I'm not going to disturb her in case she is molting. If she's trying to commit suicide I don't want to interfere, either. Sheesh! She obviously wants to be in the water so I'll just let it play out.

Any ideas?

Ts can be weird.

Three days without water isn't horrible. Sometimes, slings like it a little bit more humid than adults, so you can dampen the area around the water dish.

I'd leave her alone. Her lungs are underneath her, so she's definitely not drowning upside down. Could be she (or he) is molting, and the moisture helps.

I'd leave him or her alone and see. They're hardier than we give them credit for, especially the GBB. She was my most active sling.

Keep us posted!

 

[RonC]

I bent the wire stem of the plant into a V and hot glued it and a small piece of the moss to cover the glue and stem on top of the cork hide. Made a slight depression under the hide when I packed the substrate. T has kept digging out the depression till it closed off the opening and sank the cork into the substrate. T did dig it's way out this morning. All without filling the water dish, made a levee around it.

 

[laservet]

Thanks. This morning she was upright in her water container with her front legs on the rim. I'll tempt her with a roach this evening if she isn't upside down.

 

[laservet]

Curled up just outside of the water dish, looks dead.

 

[KdeBruyn]

If it is the case that your T has passed, I am truly sorry. Stay encouraged though and just know you did the best you could for it, and it is always the right choice to leave your Ts alone when showing signs of molting, which is exactly what you did.

 

[Ellenantula]

Curled up just outside of the water dish, looks dead.

Any updates?

 

[boina]

This is a bit weird- the sling seem to have commited suicide in the water bowl.

There is a lot of height in that enclosure, though. Despite what people tell about the arboreal tendencies of GBBs, these are still basically terrestrials. Are you sure it hasn't fallen and injured itself somehow? One extremely successful breeder of GBBs also told me that he keeps slings on slightly moist substrate and only lets it dry out completely when they get more than 1" in size. It could also be that it just got sick and died...

 

[laservet]

Thank you all. After over 48 hours with legs curled up, on its side just outside the water dish, unresponsive to tapping on the enclosure, I thought it had died. But this morning it was back in the water dish, upright, and moves when disturbed. Ack!

I offered a wounded roach, no interest. As far as an injury goes it is possible. I don't see any visible abnormalities but it did drop about 4-5 inches into the Tupperware container that served as its temporary home while I was setting up the enclosure. After dropping into the temporary container it wandered around so it was moving normally and it killed and ate two roaches in the three days it was in there. But I'll put injury on the list of rule outs.

The plastic temp container was washed in the dishwasher but I didn't rinse it out before dropping the sling into it. Wonder if this is a toxicity. I rinse off my travel coffee mug when it's been washed in the dishwasher to get the dishwasher smell out of the rubber parts. In retrospect I probably should have rinsed the container first.

I'll moisten the substrate a little, too.

 

[laservet]

Followup. Definitely dead. The abdomen became very distended, eventually ruptured, not sure if that was pre or post mortem. I'm going to clean everything out and get another one.

 

[AngelDeVille]

Definitely way too much height in the enclosure, rupture from a fall most likely.

A lot more substrate and more moisture.

 

[laservet]

Definitely way too much height in the enclosure, rupture from a fall most likely.

A lot more substrate and more moisture.

Will do.