Beautiful spiders! Sorry to hear about your GBB. What happened?I had a GBB sling but it died
RIP wee guy.
Heres my LP (again, the choice of food was purely cuz I worried, he hadn';t eaten for AGES, he decided to eat the cricket head so the meal worm and cricket bum were removed
Yes, that's one of the reasons I want one. I read/heard they are much easier to take care of than some other large species like the T. blondi and T. stirmi who are both hard to breed (increasing price) and prone to both illness, mites and flies (if wc). Also, they need an abnormally high humidity. LP's may not get as large, but I am good with "close enough".
When i started this hobby I lost a B. smithi sling because I overfed it, and sadly I witnessed the dying process of the sling and I couldn't do anything. It was 1.5", you may regard it a sling or a very young juvenile. After the last supper, it just kept pressing its mouthparts on the wall and fluid came out from its mouth as if it vomited. Suddenly i saw the connection between the abdomen and the cephalothorax elongated greatly and the spider stopped moving. I checked it, and it was dead. I waited 7 days and hoped some miracles happened but it's plain dead in a death curl. Caresheets etc are not always correct and I did learn a hard lesson - at least its death made me refrain from overfeeding my rest B. smithi and B. auratum slings.
So sorry to hear that. Sounds completely agonizing, especially for someone new to the hobby...
I recently had a .75 GBB sling randomly die on me. Had it for about a week, it moved around and seemed perfectly healthy. Then one day it walked over to the damp side of the enclosure, death curled and died. Abdomen was plump, no lesions or injuries.I really don't know. He was fine, then he wasn't. And a month or so before that I had a G.Pulchra sling die. That, however, was due to a fall. The LP has been alive for 3 months in my care now, so phew
So, should I try to wrestle the cricket away from him? It's been holding on to it for the last 5 hours and who knows how long it was eating it beforehand.
I say no. How many times larger would you call the cricket compared to the sling?
I threw in two legs (which he didn't touch) and the back end of the cricket. I have had these for about a week and they were very well fed. Carrots, green beans and crushed dog food and this cricket was plump. I would have to say it was much fatter but the length of the back end was about the same length as the prosoma and opisthosoma together.