# Adventures in Baby Arachnids



## cacoseraph (Aug 27, 2012)

I have had a bit of captive hatch (wild caught mom that was not bred by me) and captive bred luck this year for the sort of non-standard arachnids and thought i would share it with the hobby.


First off are baby solpugids.  These are captive hatched from a WC female my brother caught in Tucson, AZ, USA.


2012, late June
The female had laid eggs as her last gasp about one month prior to these pictures being taken.  She was kept in a moderately high ventilation container with relatively dry substrate.  When we found her dead with ~20 eggs scattered on the top of the substrate i decided to try and hatch the eggs using a calculated neglect method.  basically, i left the eggs on the sub and sprayed the substrate (but NOT the eggs, themselves) every few days.   i was shooting for keeping the substrate between slightly wet and almost completely dry.  The eggs started out more translucent and became more and more opaque as the weeks progressed

2012, July 28
I had almost given up on the eggs being viable, but my rule with bugstuff is to keep trying until the subject is stinky or crunchy.. so i went through the motions of watering but without any real hope... THEN i found this 













2012, August 3
Over about a week 11 of the 20 eggs hatched out!







2012, August 7
after around 10 days the first hatched molted into their next instar.  The previous instar was nonmotile (didn't move around) but this new instar could run around a bit












the most advanced specimen was starting to look like a really real solpugid







at this point, i still didn't have any real solid evidence the critters were eating but they did seem to be somewhat interested in roach parts


2012, August 11
Still not clearly eating







2012, August 25
Finally, after hatching about a month ago, the babies starting very definitely eating!













proof is in the eating of the pudding







I'm going to make a youtube eventually, but i wanted to share my success and methods to obtain it.  Stay tuned to see how this turns out

Reactions: Like 20


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## catfishrod69 (Aug 27, 2012)

That is very very awesome man. Congrats. Youve hatched out something thats very hard to. I was debating on getting a large number of these, and trying some housing/feeding/watering experiments, to try and help narrow down ways to keep them alive longest, get them to mate, and actually have young that live. Please keep us updated.


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## lizardminion (Aug 27, 2012)

This is valuable information, and would definitely help give some insight on the future of solfugids in captivity.


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## jbm150 (Aug 28, 2012)

Amazing stuff!  Keep doing what you're doing!


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## Shrike (Aug 28, 2012)

What a rare opportunity.  Good luck caring for the little guys.  Keep up the good work and please keep us posted!


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## John Apple (Aug 28, 2012)

very cool Andrew...very cool indeed


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## zonbonzovi (Aug 28, 2012)

Well done!  I tried making a tiny sling-style incubator for these and got nothing but hard candy.


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## Michiel (Aug 29, 2012)

That's very cool, Caco! Good thing that you persevered! Thanks for posting that!


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## RobynTRR (Aug 29, 2012)

Wow, that is amazing to see!


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## cacoseraph (Aug 30, 2012)

so, down to brass tacks

as you can see from the Aug 03, 2012 pic these solis are being kept in ~16 oz deli cups with around 40 pin holes poked in the lid.    this cage was used in monsoon season in a swamp cooled little house in Tucson, AZ, over roughly a month as eggs and almost another month until they ate.  it will be a formidble task to make general rules to get various species to stable instars


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## oldmanofthesea (Aug 30, 2012)

WOW!!! Keep up the great work and keep us updated. Ton


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## Widowman10 (Aug 31, 2012)

great job caco, well done. thanks for the documentation as well.


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## The Snark (Sep 1, 2012)

This may sound moronic but... Could the OP change the title of this thread to something definitive that could be easily searched for future reference??


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## cacoseraph (Sep 1, 2012)

there is going to be more baby arachnid pictures in here, eventually.  the title has just the right scope for what the thread will eventually contain.  and no, after 24h the OP can't change anything, actually


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## ZergFront (Sep 1, 2012)

That is quite the accomplishment! The very reason I haven't kept any is the very small portion of information there is out there for care in captivity and most especially breeding. I'd some day like to keep some of those very fuzzy ones I saw in pictures. There are even black ones.


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## cacoseraph (Sep 1, 2012)

so many sweet exotics and local USA species!  i talked with a guy at Ken the Bug Guy's shop who said he had kept them and gotten babies to eat baby spiders from sacs he ripped open... but i think he might have only been trying live feeding.  if he comes in again, i am totally going to ask him a few questions now that i have had time to think 

also, one fairly terrible thing is that i am in native range (and in fact just a very few miles away from birth site) of these specimens' mother, so EVERYTHING is going to be a million times easier for me compared to like, anyone who lives more than a couple hundred miles away.  if we can crack the local code than any achievements with one particular species will pale into inconsequentiality


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## cacoseraph (Sep 2, 2012)

September 2, 2012
Evidence that the baby solpugids are molting into the next instar


old skin suit





also, that white ball is very interesting to me right now (far right and very out of focus). i need to do more reading but i think it might be full of poo and indicate a sort of incompletely developed GI tract at the last instar. no idea, though










the new fast 







the new fast ending its fast














And Now For Something Completely Different
6-8 months ago my brother and i mated a pair of WC Paraphyrnus mexicanus, Mexican tailless whipscorpions and got some babies out of the mom.  I have vid and pic of the mating but it is on an external hdd i need to rehook up to my computer.  I am going to make a youtube of it all, eventually.


May 17, 2012
mated this girl 4-5 months prior to this picture









July 29, 2012
2.5 months later the eggs have turned into nymphs!







July 31, 2012
the babies have finished eclosing and are riding around on mom.  took them out for a photoshoot... they might be in a bug book one day, now!





i played with this girl a fair amount and she was pretty good about walking on me... she ended up "voluntarily" walking up my arm when i was wrangling her for the shoot.  the lens in my hand is how i take pictures of bugs with a basic ~$100 PAS digicam







August 7, 2012 (this is the date on the folder i uploaded to, i think the pictures were taken a few days before, but i am not sure)
my brother took these pictures while i held the flashlight and cage












August 8, 2012  
unforntunately after i recaged after the shoot i forgot that the critters were in a much higher ventilation cage and dry killed all but four.  two of those four succumbed to damage within a day or two.  they babies had dispersed off their mom by now and were separated







August 25, 2012
the babies are vicious hunters and will take crickets about ~1/4 to 1/3 their size.  the babies seem to ignore prekilled food, which is annoying

Reactions: Like 4


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## zonbonzovi (Sep 3, 2012)

So hard to find.  The fact that you got a pair and offspring is damned cool and like finding a rare flower in an abandoned urban lot.  These are the reason I haunt in ground water utility boxes when everything outside is crispy & hot.  Here's hoping you finagle a 2nd gen. out these.


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## paassatt (Sep 3, 2012)

Very cool thread...I'll most definitely be keeping an eye on this one.


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## lizardminion (Sep 4, 2012)

Threads like these deserve a subscription button...


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## cacoseraph (Sep 5, 2012)

you can actually subscribe to threads 

go to reply -> reply advanced, and the third sort of section down is a checkbox to subscribe to a thread for updates. by default, it is unchecked but you can go ahead and check it off the next time you make a reply and i believe that should do it



WOOOWoooOOOOW <-- Wolf Whistle




A WC mom dropped a sac which was surprising considering we had mostly just, you know, killed wolves we caught before. Well, i guess the surprising part is what happened after that =P

The Bride (April 01, 2012):






April 18, 2012
Mom with eggsac.  This is a good amount of time after she had made the eggsac. I disturbed her as little as possible for like 2-3 weeks and used a flash and stuff to take this pic






May 2, 2012
She ate a couple times while she was carrying the sac and then one day i noticed






May 27, 2012
The babies are cute.  Fierce hunters and skilled scavengers, these babies have a fast metabolism and need a lot of attention (you know, relative to the easiest stuff i keep) when they are young






June 6, 2012
The babies are very easy to feed, but require more food more often than just about any tarantula i have kept (~50 species, nothing too crazy, never did get the hang of Avics =P)










the kid took this wounded but alive very tiny mealworm or almost adult small random beetle larva that lives in my roach colony






July 18, 2012
huge rates of attrition.  overall trend was containers i separated multiple babies into produced far more longer term survivors because the babies are far less forgiving of privation.  Ken might have cracked a SWEET trick for what appears to be this species

Reactions: Like 2


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## Galapoheros (Sep 5, 2012)

Cool!, completely missed this thread.  Is Paraphyrnus mexicanus found in AZ?


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## cacoseraph (Sep 5, 2012)

yup and NM and maybe TX, too

don't think it gets in CA cuz i could never find any records of any tailless there

---------- Post added 09-05-2012 at 08:24 PM ----------

I am trying out uploading very short segments (teasers) that will be used in a later, "feature length" youtube.    

In this clip a captive hatched (wild caught mom made eggs/babies without my having bred her) baby camel/sun spider is eating half a baby roach i gave it


[YOUTUBE]SQ1UD8qC4Og[/YOUTUBE]


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## Tenodera (Sep 6, 2012)

This is really fun to read about. Great work! 
You should tell this site about some of your findings, it looks like they still have a few blanks to fill in. www.solpugid.com


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## cacoseraph (Sep 6, 2012)

heh, i am in contact with WSavary (or his brother, both names start with W, iirc), who is the listed copy right holder.  they took pics of my babies once, already


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## austin94531 (Sep 29, 2013)

*Same situation*

Is anybody still there? 
I think I have a gravid Egyptian wind scorpion, I'm basing this off her gigantic size and the fact she was caught in Egypt 2 weeks ago. I have a few question:
1) how are your hatchling doing
2) what type of sub did you use
3) how often did you mist the tank
And any other info that you think might help would be appreciated 
Thanks for your time 
Austin  
Oh I also have a photo of the female, but I have no clue how to post it. I can email it to whomever thinks they will be able to tell if she is in fact gravid.


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## cacoseraph (Oct 2, 2013)

1) I think one got to 4i, a few to 3i, most died in 2i.  I think desiccation was a big problem.  They pretty readily would eat from prekilled insects.
2) Coconut coir, i use that stuff for pretty much everything.  I am not really interested in animals that have unusual care requirements.
3) I wouldn't really say I misted.  I watered the sub using a spray bottle, but sprayed it down into the sub and only in one corner/spot of the cage.

Honestly, I just kept them like I do everything else, more or less.  I kept them like a drier side tarantula.  The sub would look totally dry (the lightest brown color coir gets) and then I would spray the sub enough to have a dark brown patch where i sprayed that wouldn't even spread out to more than ~15% of the volume of substrate.  The mom couldn't exactly true burrow (not enough and the right kind of sub) but did excavate under a piece of structure to make a big ol' scrape.

Join a hosting service like photobucket and then post an image link to forums.  You used to be able to upload to AB, but they have finite amounts of storage and bandwidth and/or can incur more costs if they serve too much.  Plus, you can upload to pb once and post links in any forum or webpage you want.

For some of the soli's you can actually see the eggs through their body wall.  If they have too dark or thick of a skin you might not be able to.


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## Shagg (Oct 6, 2013)

Congrats! I like your determination!
Caco your quite adept @ baby care-taking which I find difficult as a arachno-noob. 
I think I'll adopt your bug philosophy of not giving up till stinky or crunchy.

Hope the little ones are eating well


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## cacoseraph (Oct 6, 2013)

Shagg, to be honest, I am adept at a somewhat narrow band of creatures who have requirements that align with the kind of care that I naturally give.  I think it is important to find bugs that suit your interests and like, natural abilities.


We had another couple mother Mexican tailless produce the babies this year.  Both of these were captive hatch (not bred by us) as we forgot to do any breeding the previous year.

Mom with a baby going from 2i to 3i, I think


A couple of babies in various setups.  The stones are from our yard.



We got about 20 babies from each mom.  Here is the first batch all separated.



Side note:  I kept meaning to look up if Amblypygi were iteroparitive (can make babies/eggs then molt, then make more babies/eggs) or semelparitive but never quite got around to it.  Well, here is a one of the moms post post-making-the-babies molt... so iteroparitive it apparently is.


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## The Snark (Oct 6, 2013)

cacoseraph said:


> Shagg, to be honest, I am adept at a somewhat narrow band of creatures who have requirements that align with the kind of care that I naturally give.  I think it is important to find bugs that suit your interests and like, natural abilities.


!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


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## Ambly (Oct 10, 2013)

Awesome pics! Paraphrynus mexicanus seems like a very cool species to keep.  For some reason, it is the only species of Amblypygid commonly in the trade that I haven't pursued getting.  I'll have to pick some up!  Keep it comin man, love the pictures and details of your experience.


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