Getting Kukulcania aka Arizona BH?

[ChickenTaco]

Hey! So its been awhile! And finally have time to go about and get some more spiders (plus rescued a few wolf's from my chickens after they wandered into the coop for flies) and decided I wanted to get some kukulcania(probably spelt that wrong) so! Who has advice on feed, space/set up? I know the ones I'm getting are an Arizona species, anyone have some experience?/advice?

 

[chanda]

Don't expect to see them very often! I have a female Kukulcania sp. from Arizona and I almost never see her. The females will make their webs in a small hole or crevice and rarely emerge from it. When they do emerge from their holes, they don't go far - and are extremely quick to get back into them when you turn on the lights or approach. In the wild I have occasionally seen the females hanging out on the "front porch" of their webs, but they zip down their holes every time I get close.

As far as housing goes, they're pretty easy. She's in a small acrylic cage with a screen top, a mix of sand and coconut fiber for substrate, and a couple of cork slabs and a cholla tube. She's moved in to the cholla tube and rarely leaves it. I drop in a medium cricket once a week or so and give her a spritz of water a couple of times a week and she seems to be doing fine. I've had her for about a year now.

I have also kept males briefly, and they are much more active than the females, prowling around their cages pretty much all the time. I have not tried to keep them long-term, though - I've brought them in for a week or two (to show my students) and then released them back into the wild. I did have one male that I got as a juvenile (I was hoping it would turn out female) and kept until he matured. He did fine in captivity, but once he matured and got restless, I let him go. (To be clear - the spiders I released were wild-caught local SoCal Kukulcania that I had caught around here. I released them back into the same area where I found them in the first place.)

 

[Ungoliant]

Who has advice on feed, space/set up? I know the ones I'm getting are an Arizona species, anyone have some experience?/advice?

Here is some care information I wrote about Kukulcania hibernalis. (It may not be the same species as yours, but I would expect care to be similar.)

 

[Smokehound714]

i find them readily in socal's deserts. i have a big female

 

[Galapoheros]

Have them in my house here in Texas. There is one big female near the ceiling by the back sliding door. One time a red wasp flew in and hit the web. That spider grabbed that wasp and drug it in behind a board she stays in. I was surprised to see that, most spiders seem to have an instinct to stay away from wasps, so many of them eat spiders. I've never tried to keep one but they can't be hard if the survive the house.