Grammostola Rosea Egg sac in a PetsMart

[AvicVerso]

Hey I am totally new to the hobby and the forum, but I already love the hobby. I have a 2.5 inch AvicVersi. Anyways...at my local PetsMart the G. Rosea they have has produced an egg sac. no one there knows what to do or how to care for the egg sac. My question is twofold:

1. Is the egg sac "real" i.e. are there definitely a bunch of slings awaiting a potentially unpleasant fate? or is it possible it is just web with no viable eggs

2. If I am able to, and the eggs are viable, I want to try and raise the egg sac and give the slings a better life than petsmart display (or trashcan more likely)

I have the time and the patience to care for details and the space to house slings, but I do need a ton of help in the details, like
a. what to feed them
b. where to house them
c. what temps,
d. anything else I may be missing

thanks yall and finally if this info is on another thread please let me know! (I did try to look before posting)

 

[T-ray]

It is possible the eggsac is real, especially since most LPS get wild caught Ts. Check out the almighty Stan Schultz's care guide for general G rosea care and eggsac/sling care at http://people.ucalgary.ca/~schultz/roses.html . He also posts on the forums as Pikaia, so you can always search for his posts on here.

Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk 2

 

[AvicVerso]

Thanks for the help, I got some direction now and will hopefully lay claim to the egg sac

 

[DannyH]

http://arachnophiliac.info/burrow/btscareguides.htm

Go to "Care and Feeding of Spiderlings"

 

[tpduckwa]

Where is the petsmart that has the rosie in question? I was not aware that petsmart stores on the east coast carry tarantulas

 

[darkness975]

Where is the petsmart that has the rosie in question? I was not aware that petsmart stores on the east coast carry tarantulas

MA, RI, pretty much every state except CT and maybe one other carry tarantulas/scorpions/etc. CT is just really far behind the times.

 

[tpduckwa]

interesting. i know we don't have them here in NC

 

[AvicVerso]

it is in Mt. Pleasant SC, they have two Avic avics and the momma G. rosea

 

[Anonymity82]

I work in a PS in NC and will try to remember to ask my manager if any stores carry them in NC. The one I work at doesn't. I've never seen any in NJ either but I haven't checked in a couple of years in NJ. In fact, I have never seen any in any petsmart ever.

PetCo carries them. Just about every one I've been in has had them. The care guide we have the rose is pretty crappy. Instead of making a separate care guide they lumped it together with an Emperor scorpion care guide. Why they would try to put two completely different set of care regimens in one care guide I don't know. And before anybody asks why I didn't tell my manager I'll tell you like I tell the lady who comes in every week and complains, relentlessly and repeatedly, that we should put the heavier bags of cat litter on top so she could just pull them into her cart instead of needing someone to pick up the bags for her, that I have mentioned it to my boss and the people who come up with floor layout or the care guides, are higher up on the chain of command and I can't make them listen to me. I can however give the proper information and help the lady lift the bag. The bag lifting is easy, it's the 10 minutes of her repeating over and over and over, week after week that we should change this for HER.

Oh, and here is our wonderful careguide for roses and emps: http://www.mypetsmart.com/care-guides/reptile/scorpions-tarantulas/setup-steps

Also, the guide's online are much less in depth than the actual paper care guides.

 

[tpduckwa]

I work in management for a petsmart in NC and have never heard of any stores in NC carrying them. I think its strange that some stores in certain areas carry them while others do not. There are a number of corporate policies I don't understand or agree with but I can't change anything from the store level. Anyway, while I would love to have tarantulas at the store, I'm not exactly thrilled with the idea of WC g rosea's.

 

[AvicVerso]

Yeah I cannot say I am either much rather have CB, but I did purchase the G. rosea and got the egg sac in the bargain, so now I am just hoping to have a successful hatching! time will tell...

 

[BorisTheSpider]

Yeah I cannot say I am either much rather have CB, but I did purchase the G. rosea and got the egg sac in the bargain, so now I am just hoping to have a successful hatching! time will tell...

Good luck , but be warned . I bought a female from the boards here and she dropped a sack less then two weeks after I got her . I pulled the sack the other day the are over 125 eggs and I only found two duds so far . They are starting to turn into eggs with legs and before too long I'm gonna have more Ts the William Shatner in Kingdom of the Spiders .

 

[AvicVerso]

Well I wish I could have the opportunity your about to have (despite the demands it makes) to try and care for all the slings but unfortunately I have been robbed of the opportunity. I left for class and when I came back my rose hair was holding the egg sac over the water dish. I had dampened one third of the enclosure and had tried to cover the top to retain humidity but I guess it was not enough (or at least that is my guess as to why she did this). Anyways because she held the egg sac over the water it split open and eggs fell out and the rest became infested with fruit flies. I now realize, the situation in which I came to have the spider and the egg sac I should have pulled teh egg sac and artificially incubated I guess. It stinks but the momma is ok, and maybe now I can try the breeding process from beginning to end and do it right. I am just bummed I didnt save teh sac before she soaked it.

 

[Stan Schultz]

... Anyways because she held the egg sac over the water it split open and eggs fell out and the rest became infested with fruit flies. I now realize, the situation in which I came to have the spider and the egg sac I should have pulled teh egg sac and artificially incubated I guess. ...

Sorry to hear this.

... It stinks but the momma is ok, and maybe now I can try the breeding process from beginning to end and do it right. I am just bummed I didnt save teh sac before she soaked it.

Because your girl was wild caught she's still living on the Chilean/Southern Hemisphere calendar. The seasons are 180° out of phase, and she thinks it's spring. So, she has to undergo the dreaded "Hemisphere Shift."

If she's right on schedule, first she'll molt in a few months (typically 60 to 90 days). In the meantime she'll stop eating entirely and won't resume for at least 6 months and for maybe as long as 3 years (though that's rare). During this period, make sure she always has access to fresh water. Offer her one (1) adult cricket (or body mass equivalent) a week. When it becomes obvious that she's no longer interested in food, drop back to offering her only one (1) adult cricket (or body mass equivalent) a month. Offering her a cricket every once in a great while is merely a test to see when she's finished with the adjustment.

When she finally eats the test cricket, you can resume feeding her the usual one (1) adult cricket (or body mass equivalent) a week. The exact schedule you feed her on is largely irrelevant except that it should average out to a rate of about 4 or 5 adult crickets a month. And, if necessary, she can go a full month between feedings.

It will be useless to try breeding her again until after she's gone through this entire adjustment period. If you breed her before she molts, she'll merely shed the sperm and become a virgin again before she has a chance to produce viable eggs. After she molts and starts the Shift, her hormonal balance is going to be so messed up that while she may accept a male, she almost certainly won't produce an eggsac.

After she finishes the Shift, molts, and begins to eat regularly she'll be ready for life as usual (if such a thing exists for roses!), but will probably be working on a Northern Hemisphere calendar. That means that she will want to breed in September through November, go into a state of winter doldrums, then produce an eggsac just like any other Northern Hemisphere tarantula. And, that's great!

But, you need to supply her with a freshly molted male, not one that molted on the old, Chilean calendar last October or November, and is now so old he's probably sterile. There are at least two ways to do this:

1) Acquire several 2/3 to 3/4 grown, immature males. Allow them to go through their own Hemisphere shift before they mature. They will then mature on a Northern Hemisphere calendar (usually during our spring) the same as your female, and breed as a Northern Hemisphere tarantula. Note that you need to get sufficiently young males so that they complete their Shift BEFORE they mature. This will require two to three years lead time. That's why you're getting 2/3 to 3/4 grown, immature males.

2) When your female finishes her adjustment and resumes eating, advertise for FRESHLY molted males in the Classified forums, particularly the Invertsonals forum.

Option #1 requires a lot of forethought and planning. But you end up knowing exactly what you're dealing with, you needn't worry about sharing the babies with someone else (removes a potentially complicating social component), and you get any and ALL the proceeds.

Option #2 doesn't require so much forethought and planning, but you have no guarantee that someone else's male is really what they say it is, you'll almost certainly have to share the babies (do you know how to ship them?), and you'll have to worry about the female eating someone else's male and how to settle that with the male's owner.

Both options will require no small amount of patience on your part, but what were you planning on doing for the rest of your life anyway?

Lastly, the tarantulas never read the outline I've presented here, and even if they did they'd go out of their way to make a monkey out of me! Roses are notorious for doing things their own way and according to their own timetable. Don't be a bit surprised if she does something completely unexpected, or completely out of schedule. That's one of many reasons they're so much fun!


Enjoy your little 8-legged WunderSpinne!

 

[AvicVerso]

thank you for the wealth of information! and yeah got nothing better to do than rear some spiders solid use of time I'd say. Also I think I would go with option two, just because I don't think I want a couple more males, if I could do one I would do that. And its for the love of breeding so splitting profits is ok with me! (as long as I learn shipping properly). and if nothing else I certainly am enjoying the heck out of this spider. she is beyond docile its a great pair with the more secluded A. versi I have. I appreciate the time you took to post here : )