Need help caring for unknown species of hunting spider!

Heartfang

Arachnoknight
Old Timer
Joined
Nov 13, 2004
Messages
282
Need help caring for unknown species of wolf spider!

Hello yet again everyone! I guess it was my turn to get lucky... About an hour ago I was getting ready for bed, putting away my video games I was just playing. I turn around to shut my door when I notice something dark just underneath the door. On closer inspection I find out it's a spider. Immediatly I think one of mine has escaped so I slightly move the door a couple inches to get a better look. Surprise! It's a 2 inch wolf spider! I grab a small plastic tupperware container and trap the arachnid. Then I begin to fill an empty enclosure with Eco-Earth to house the little fella. Then I transfered the spider from the container to the enclosure. I watch it run around for a minute and it looks as though it wants to escape. I drop in a good sized cricket and the spider seemed to run from it, trying to run up a corner. The spider then turns around and WHAM! It nails the cricket. It looks as though the spider is female because I see no boxing gloves on the end of the palps. Right now she (still not 100% sure of the sex) is happily munching away on the cricket. How do you properly house these spiders? How often should I feed it? What is the average life span? As you can tell I have never cared for such a spider before, so I am hoping this will be my first!
 
Last edited:

cacoseraph

ArachnoGod
Old Timer
Joined
Jan 5, 2005
Messages
8,325
some wolf spiders require a constant source of water

i had one die on me, i think from dessication. i read that to successfully keep them they need open water. i thought since taratula slings of that size didn't need water a similar sized spider would be ok too.

obviously this was a little naive on my part :(

other than that, i just keep them like a terrestrial tara and they now seem to do fine :)
 
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