Proper Care & Feeding of Calisoga

[richp]

Hi all,

I caught a Calisoga in my empty pool (having work done on it) yesterday. I live in the Sierra foothills near Grass Valley, CA. I've found Calisoga's in the past dead in my pool and found a couple burrows in the past. This is the first one I've caught alive and healthy. It is a feisty spider that is very aggressive. I love how it goes into its defensive posture with the front legs extended up in the air.

I put it in a 9x14x6" plastic container with about 2" of native dirt and black oak mulch/leaves in it. I caught a few small beetles, a large carpenter ant, and a small inchworm and threw them in there along with a couple of small spiders. I also put a Gatorade bottle cap with water in the enclosure. Overnight it dug a burrow and lined it with a small web at the entrance. Is two inches of dirt enough? I didn't want to put more in there or else it could get out fairly easy. When I put the carpenter ant in at the burrow entrance it walked partially down the hole but the spider did not go for it.

My main question is what to feed it and how often? It is approximately 2.5" long from front to back legs. I figured if I keep it in the garage the climate will be similar to what it had naturally outside. I'd appreciate any tips on caring for it. I've searched the web and found some general information but no real in-depth info on the spider and its feeding habits, habitat, etc.

I always thought these were a type of tarantula and had found some dead ones in the Santa Cruz mountains when I used to live there. It wasn't until I started researching it on the web yesterday that I found out it isn't actually a tarantula. It sure is a cool looking spider though!

Also, how do I tell a male from a female? If it was caught in my pool roaming around does that lend it to be a male? How long should I expect it to live if cared for properly? Will it come out of it's burrow much? Only at night? I'd like to get some pictures of it to post but it is in hiding now.

Any help/pointers appreciated! I'll post some pictures when I can get some.

Cheers,

Rich

 

[richp]

Here are a couple pics I took when he(?) came out tonight. One with the flash on and one with it off.

Rich

 

[richp]

Ok...a few more with him in his defensive posture.

 

[Miss Bianca]

he's lookin' good'n'comfy to me!!!

 

[Pacmaster]

I caught one a few years ago, well 15 or so, and it was soo mean I kept the lid duct taped on the 10g tank.
I am no expert, and this would only be a assumption based off info Ive learned recently, but Id say that is a male.

It should eat anything you can buy, or find in your yard(think pesticides tho).

They are so aggressive that I just had to have 1 again, so I ordered 2 slings.
There are a couple guys here, who should eventually chime in, that are much more knowledgable than me about these spiders.

I use the same methodology when dealing with natives, if it can live in the yard, it can live in a tank in the garage.

I am planning on a collecting trip at some point in the coming summer, and was gonna start with my buddies property in Auburn, so hearing you got that 1 in Grass Valley is very promising.

I absolutely love these native spiders, and cant wait till my slings grow up, which they are doing rather quickly.

Good luck, and get used to that threat pose- thats all I remember from my wc years ago, thats how I always saw it.

Ps- if ya dont want it and dont want it on your property, Ill give it a good home(or any others you may find).

 

[cacoseraph]

in nature we found spiders that looked quite similar to those in very "obligate burrower" type of burrows. some of the burrows were more than 2 feet long. it is possible they take over rodent burrows as both had perfectly circular enterances.... in rodent burrows you find seeds and plant residue and in spider burrows you find a boneyard and a bit of webbing and that was the only way to tell them apart

in captivity they can act like opportunistic burrowers and will move into setups with rock or other crevices built into the ground for them


i reckon they can take a bit of dryness but i always kept them on the more moist side cuz they seemed to favor spots that would stay a bit moister in the summer in nature


as for feeding, they seemed to vary from very aggressive to somewhat timid feeders. because i used to keep a lot of bugs i would prekill all the roaches or crickets i handed out, as that way i could feed less often but bigger prey items... and you don't have to worry about feeders taking a nip on your pet


as for what to feed it... if you want to keep it as a pet i would quit feeding it random bugs you catch. they can carry pesticide or pathogen loads and harm you spider. carpenter ants and hymenoptera in general should not be fed live, as they can possess harmful or even fatal stings. prekilled they are pretty good, though beetles can have various toxic chemicals, though many are good to feed pets

as for when to feed it... if you are keeping it in your garage you are going to follow a pattern similar to what i do... in winter you might not need to feed it for 2-3 months during the coldest part of the year... but conversely in warmer times you need to feed much more often. if you feed relatively large prey items even during the warmest times of the year you probably are not going to need to feed it more than a couple times a month. if you are not looking to breed a spider you should keep it more lean and mean rather than bloated and rediculous... eventually you will be getting used to the abdomen size of your spider and will know if you need to feed it more or less

 

[richp]

So you would recommend pre-killing store-bought crickets? I didn't think the spider would eat any dead insects. What about meal worms?

Thx,

Rich

 

[cacoseraph]

well the reason i prekilled is that a lot of times animals would get shy and not eat a cricket or roach for quite a while. whether they are actually afraid, or losing the feeder in the cage, or approaching a molt, or whatever... i would find stuff that had to have been roaming around the cage for weeks or months. i even had a roach mom live birth 30+ little babies into a non-baby-roach-secure cage at least once. i don't think i can really recall an obvious time that any pets got munched by a prey item, but i doubt i would notice a foot or antenna tip missing so it could have happened in small scale.

once i prekilled a lot of the problems and annoyances i had were pretty well fixed. of course, there were a few new problems introduced. uneaten prekilleds + fairly moistly kept animals = mold and in worst case scenario a substrate change in part or whole. so i dialed back how moist i kept just about everything... but compensated by fairly drastically reducing ventilation. for most babies i would either have no vent or one tiny pinhole added to the like, widely used plastic condiment cup and tightly fitting plastic lid setup. for something like the baby calisogas i used no vent and had them in 3/4 and 2oz condiment cups and would need to add something like 10-15 drops of water a month to them. i really ends up depending on how much actual air and water exchange goes on. with cocofiber it is pretty easy to get a feel for how moist it is by color alone. as long as they are not in dry sub for too long all my bugs have been good to go. it really cuts down on maintenance as i can leave them sit for 3-4 weeks at a time. be careful though, as more than just a pinhole and they can dry out surprisingly fast sometimes. stuff like baby centipedes can die of dessication decently easy so you can to be more careful with them. even my adult stuff has very restricted ventilation, helped along by my preference for all plastic containers for everything.

i almost always prekilled mealworms as they can burrow down in most substrates and not all spiders will dig them up. i have had plenty of meal worms turn into beetles before i started giving them a head smoosh before dealing them out. also, some timid feeders would try a mealworm once and have the thing flip out on them, literally... and never want to try such a wild meal again.

i can't really think of anything i routinely don't prekill, to be honest. well, sometimes i just do a like, mangling crunch instead of a full on kill-them-for-sure-move. if you smoosh their head just right they will keep on walking around and at least responding somehow to stuff for hours or days and that seems to stimulate feeding response in some animals. and for sure, sometimes i put unwounded prey items in some cages and watch to make sure it gets taken right away... i mean, a good amount of the fun of having all these predators and meat eaters around is to watch them do their thing

a funny anecdote, related to this... i prekilled an adult female lobster roach N. cinerea and put her ina cage one time. apparently she was just about to live birth cuz when the whatever bug that was eating starting to eat she started leaking live babies =P

edit:
oh, and as far as stuff eating dead stuff... i have kept something approaching 100 species of tarantulas, mygs, centipedes, scorps, and a few other odds and ends and just about all of them would eat appropriately sized prekilled, or even parts of a "butchered" cricket. there were some individual exceptions that didn't really take to it at first, but overall just about everything. i sort of remember having a little problem getting arboreal tarantulas to really take to the prekilled or butchered parts method at first, but i do seem to think everyone got on board eventually. unless you have fairly small stuff for timid eaters and truly tiny stuff for the babies of some species all the time it lets you use bigger prey items and not worry about scaring or hurting pets. little baby myg spiders will eat as much of something that is dead and much larger than them and then stop when they are likely literally full. you just have to be sure to pull out remains if you are going to feed with a size disparity like that... cuz when you have anything more than a semi-arid kind of setup mold and other things can crop up fairly quickly. oh, one exception is baby obligate trapdoors... they were horribly difficult to feed and i am not sure many if any have raised them egg to adult yet. pretty sure you have to keep them with mom and she feeds them en masse from big kills she makes... but i fed all my traps prekilled and had to actually pop it in the freaking burrow for them sometimes, at that

 

[Irks]

I think a lot of the fun of owning a spider is watching it catch things, so I wouldn't pre-kill anything. Unless, like cacoseraph said, you're trying to feed it something with a bad sting or bite.

 

[jsloan]

Nice looking spider!

This is a male. Note the mating hooks on the underside of the front legs (look like a couple of short prongs sticking out - visible in the 4th picture). The hooks are used to hold the female's fangs at a safe distance during mating.

Chances are if you put out a few pitfall traps at this time you'll catch some more of these. This one must have been out wandering around looking for a mate.

 

[cacoseraph]

generally speaking the mature males we captured in scabies and friends did not last all that long... none lasted close to a year that i know of, including at least one specimen that matured in captivity. and i think in fact most lasted more like 3-6 months when they were mature. i suspect that if you keep it at a lower temp and don't feed it as much you can stretch it out... but my ultimate suggestion would be that if you want a long term pet you need to get a female


oh, and speaking of sex type stuff, i think i thought of something kind of interesting. i believe i took home six of these that were adult or nearly adult size. to date, i think it has actually shaken out to be 3.3. that includes one mature male i caught as a MM, one that matured in captivity, and one that is going to mature next molt or so. i think at this point all the others will, er, stay female as it were... so it is interesting but not like, statistically significant that the distribution for 6 was 50/50. the problem is that my collection was somewhat hodgepodge... so it might favor some natural distribution of the sexes that skews the results some how. and 6 is way to small a number to trend. once you get to like 20 you can start doing some stuff... but you always have to beware your collection methods and the conclusions you draw about what is in nature

 

[Pacmaster]

Knew youd chime in here cacoseraph, thanks for some good info.

I didnt think theyd want to be in completely dryness, as has been suggested to me elsewhere.

I have the 2 slings, and they are growing fast . . .
I made them these fancy burrows so I could see them all the time, but they had their own plans.
One has taken residence under a piece of cork, piling subsstrate around the edges and making its own hole.
The other has dug its own burrow(thankfully along the side), and I have yet to see it out of it.
I think Im gonna add some oak leaves to my enclosures, for aesthetics . . .

 

[richp]

Thx for all the advice everyone. Funny story...had been out looking for crickets the last couple nights and didn't find any. I come in the garage yesterday morning and within 6 inches of the plastic bin with the spider is a good size cricket half dead! Talk about good fortune. I put it in the cage half alive and the spider came out to inspect it but didn't take it. Not sure if he has eaten it since. I also purchased a few baby crickets (~.25 in. long) yesterday and threw two in the bin...one on top of the small web he has spun between a few leaves and is crouching under. The cricket is dead now still on top of the web. I don't think the spider has touched it. His actions don't seem to indicate he is hungry. So hold off from feeding again for a while?

I'm assuming a cricket that has been fed on will be somewhat dismantled when the spider is done with it, correct?

How do I build a pitfall trap? That is basically how I caught this one in my empty (now full) pool. Just bury a bucket in the ground somewhere on my property (5.5 acres)??

Also, one of you suggested you were going to "hunt" for some of the Calisogas. How would you go about doing that other than walking around looking for burrow entrances? It would be nice to find and keep a female if they tend to live longer.

Cheers,

Rich

 

[jsloan]

How do I build a pitfall trap? That is basically how I caught this one in my empty (now full) pool. Just bury a bucket in the ground somewhere on my property (5.5 acres)??

That's pretty much it. It doesn't have to be anything big, just something like a medium sized, deep jar the spider can't climb out of. A pickle jar would work. Put out several of them, in different places. You'll also catch a lot of other spiders you don't normally see or notice. Might even turn up some large wolf spiders. Anyway, if these males are out and about now, chances are you'll catch some more.

 

[Pacmaster]

Also, one of you suggested you were going to "hunt" for some of the Calisogas. How would you go about doing that other than walking around looking for burrow entrances? It would be nice to find and keep a female if they tend to live longer.

Cheers,

Rich

It was me, and yes . . . that is my plan!
Ill be in Auburn tho, in the hills off Bell Rd.

I will also ask my buddies family to keep an eye out for them, and theyll catch and hold em for me.

Ive caught all kindsa crawlies up there.
Their property backs up to a huge track of state land that is surrounded by private properties and highways.
Goes all the way out to 65 without seeing a soul . . .
Just hope I dont wander into anyones, uhhh, "garden" out there . . .

 

[cacoseraph]

His actions don't seem to indicate he is hungry. So hold off from feeding again for a while?

I'm assuming a cricket that has been fed on will be somewhat dismantled when the spider is done with it, correct?

How do I build a pitfall trap? That is basically how I caught this one in my empty (now full) pool. Just bury a bucket in the ground somewhere on my property (5.5 acres)??

mature males probably don't eat anywhere nearly as much as mature females, so it could very well not be interested in eating right now. they tend to keep quite small abdomens, even when offered plenty of prey


crickets will be somewhat dismantled if you feed a HUGE cricket to a little spider. normally when the prey item is more appropriately sized they are converted into a bolus, that is a ball of mashed up, possibly webbed, indigestible bits. some boluses (boli?) are so masticated that you can't really tell what they used to be. oh, think owl pellets... sorta


a word of caution about pit traps... they could be illegal. in CA i am fairly certain they are illegal to catch herps with. couldn't find anything about terrestrial inverts... but then it might be a problem of convincing a ranger that you are a bug and not a herp person. but yeah, essentially just bury an open container so things fall into it. i personally don't like pit traps as i feel like i am morally obligated to recover every single one and to not leave them out foor more than a day at a time... but they can be very useful for catching males and other wandering stuff. if you are interested in pitting you might consider setting up your pits to take advantage of the natural lay of the land (or add some kinda fencing) to "funnel" things towards your pits. there are all kinds of mods you can make to a simple pit trap, depending on need, too


oh, and i had a captive juv (the only remaining spider i have after i had to sell off my collection that might be a calisoga) molt two or three days ago it sure ain't turning silver... need to take a flash pic of it to see if it might be longi or dif species or dif genus

 

[richp]

Thx for the info. Is it the females that stay in the burrows or do males utilize burrows also? Do females wander at all or just catch stuff that wanders on to the web at the entrance to their burrows?

 

[cacoseraph]

males and females both live fairly indistinguishably (in burrows) until the male matures, then he starts wandering. though, one time during the day when i was excavating the blue calisogas we found a mature male in the same burrow system as a female. so maybe males hide where they can during the day and then wander at night. come to think of it, mature males found during the day were always in some kind of burrow or hiding spot and MM found at night were wandering


as for the non-MM spiders, out of the ~30 calisoga or so i have seen now, the farthest i saw one from its burrow as about ~4-6"... so i don't think they go very far usually. of course, i have a very small sample of their total like, life habits so it is possible when they are hungry or thirsty or whatever that they can go farther