# Cyclocosmia ricketti "Guangxi Turret Rump Trapdoor Spider" - egg sac !!!



## Or4x1d (Aug 30, 2010)

Hello,

one of my Cyclocosmia ricketti females made egg sac. 
I've found it today... a week or two ago her "door" was closed.

She is wild cought. I bought her a few months ago (2010/06/06).
It's import from China. Copulation took place in the wild.

She build a burrow with hatch. 

She wasn't very big - about 3,5 cm. 

Now I've a question - because it's hard to find some info about trap doors and their egg sacs.

*How to care about egg sac ?? *
I think I'll keep the egg sac in the containter with female.
I've found information that it may take several months before the spiders come out.

humidity - ~80%
temperature - ~ 25*C

PHOTO:
1) Egg sac in the burrow


2) Burrow 


3) My female when i bought her:


4) Carapace


5) Abdomen


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## cacoseraph (Aug 30, 2010)

i would highly suggest leaving them with the mom as long as possible. i haven't seen any real good methods of raising tiny trapdoor spider babies but it does seem like virtually all the babies die before achieving any size


i maybe have something in development but it's far too early to tell if it is actually working or not.  if i can get my babies through another molt then i will post up what i did


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## zonbonzovi (Aug 30, 2010)

I think this is a first(?) in captivity...if the mother produced a sac in your care, conditions must be good.  If it were me, I'd leave it with her.  Good luck!


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## cacoseraph (Aug 30, 2010)

the first instar and maybe the second isn't too bad... the spiderlings should stay with the mom


but once they go into dispersal mode it can get tricky.  you either can let them make their tiny (like 1-2mm diameter) burrows "naturally" right next to the mom, in her cage or you need to contain the babies separately.

if you just put a baby into a little cup with some substrate it generally *will* make a burrow in there... but unless you have a constant supply of small, living prey items you have to force feed them one way or another.  it *is* possible to find their tiny little burrow and pry it open to push a slightly too large prekilled prey in... but it is massively time consuming.  my new method is basically using a wax paper hammock suspending over substrate.  the spider lives in the hammock and the substrate keeps the moisture regulated.  you just open the container and maybe pull up a layer of webbing to gain total access to the babies.  it *seems* to be working so far, but my spiders have very slow metabolisms and so i can't see if the method is actually just failing very slowly or actually working.  it appears at least 25% have eating the pieces of butchered cricket i provided for them


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## Or4x1d (Aug 30, 2010)

cacoseraph - it may be a problem to find a wax paper in my country  
Can you show a photo how looks your hammock ?

And I wonder how long it will takes to open the egg sac.

I heard that spiderlings are very smal - about 1mm.


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## bluefrogtat2 (Aug 31, 2010)

i successfully bred and raised slings from a silver brush foot trap door with no problems whatsoever...
once they had dispersed i collected and seperated them.
each made a tiny burrow and fed on their own with no problems.
i dont see why a nice sized turret would be any different?
andy


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## Or4x1d (Aug 31, 2010)

great !!

Can you tell me how much slings was in the egg sac ?
Meybe some breeding raport ?


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## bluefrogtat2 (Sep 1, 2010)

i wish i had kept better records..jeff h on another forum had great success with these and sent me a male(which i passed on after breeding)it had been right before i had some issues i needed to deal with at home,so i took a brief hiatus from daily care and had my apprentice feed while i was gone..
when i came back to feed everyone she had allready had them and they had dispersed around her cage.i dug up 23 babies and rehoused them.
there is a nice breeding report on another forum,with some great photos etc...pm me for details..
the babies all readily accepted small dubia roaches with no problem and grew fairly quickly.
andy


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## BiologicalJewels (Sep 1, 2010)

I wouold keep with mom and use springtails as food, Cyclo seem to like it moist, so, reproduction of in-cage springtails may not be an issue.


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## cacoseraph (Sep 2, 2010)

blue frog, do those make full trapdoors?

spiders that have an open burrow or are just opportunistic burrowers are no problem to feed, ime.  it is the full trapdoor or closed burrow makers that are tricky


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## Moltar (Sep 3, 2010)

Springtails probably would be a good food source, particularly if they can establish, you won't have to worry so much about acively feeding them. Or would they harrass the spiderlings too much? This is unfamiliar territory to me but fascinating. I love this species.

Reactions: Like 1


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## NevularScorpion (Sep 4, 2010)

caco remeber those bean beetle that I gave you in the Natural museum expo. do you think they are perfect feeder for those lil trap door slings ? so far that is the smallest feeder that I can think of and successfully cultured.


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## bluefrogtat2 (Sep 4, 2010)

they make a full trap door,they werent too hard at all.
even still have a few of them..
andy


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## cacoseraph (Sep 5, 2010)

@nev i thought about it, but only the adults emerge from the beans and they are WAY bigger in size than the baby spiders and i don't want to hunt larva by splitting beans =P



@tat nice!  what did you feed them? what kind of sub did you keep them on?  i am most definitely not wanting to lose any of the Apomastus babies i have now and locally i believe we have only met with failure on baby Cyrtaucheniidae and Ctenizidae.


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## bluefrogtat2 (Sep 7, 2010)

they readily accepted wounded dubia nymphs and were kept on damp coco peat.
actually grew fast
andy


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## NevularScorpion (Sep 8, 2010)

Awesome strategy


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## cacoseraph (Sep 8, 2010)

i think i am not getting something or something

when we keep our local Cten's and Cyr's on coconut coir they make absolutely tiny little trapdoors or closed burrows. the burrows are like 1mm across.  some ppl have gotten them to eat pinheads before, iirc... but to feed them something as big as a dubia nymph (those are like 3-5mm diameter, right?) you would have to tear their burrow completely apart. we had no luck getting them to accept any still living prey that was larger than them by that much


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## Or4x1d (Nov 9, 2010)

Well... afterall - today I've look into the burrow... there was no egg sac ;|
Perhabs there was smth. wrong with eggs. And female eat the egg sac.


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## CodeWilster (Nov 11, 2010)

The african _Cyphonisia sp._ and _Ctenizidae_ (_Cyclocosmia_, _Bothriocyrtum_, etc) are very different spiders and I am convinced they each have very different needs as slings. _Cyphonisia _are extremely prolific and hardy, and rearing babies of that species is IMO really no different than rearing a tiny baby tarantula. They almost immediately disperse and take small prey. _Ctenizidae_ slings, including _Cyclocosmia torreya_ and _Bothriocyrtum californicum_, can be much more tricky. I am convinced that the latter greatly depend on the mother not only in the wild (where they would remain in her burrow for one or more seasons) but also in captivity. That said, it would probably be best to leave them be with the mother (who will basically feed them and provide shelter until they disperse).

Sorry the eggsac vanished, you sure it didn't hatch and the babies are condensed at the bottom or sides of the burrow? I know there were a lot of these around for a while, I'm hoping to see some more sacs from WC adults pop up...


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## cacoseraph (Nov 20, 2010)

my method has been almost total failure. i'll keep trying, though.


the waxpaper was a bust. it's far too inclined to mold.  tried using plastic wrap and that didn't work either.  now i am down to keeping the babies in cups with almost no sub and making sure they don't dry out



oh, and Nev... i did end  up pulling beans apart.  the early instar grups are like... 1mm long?  maybe smaller... tiny at any rate.


my plan at this point is to not concentrate on getting more babies to kill... but rather to establish a few different species of tiny feeder colonies.  or at least secure access (or just buy online) to tiny feeder species.  when i am in nature i see tons of things that are almost too small to see, or at least see clearly. sure *something* will be good to eat and easy to raise


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## chrisd (Jan 3, 2023)

Moltar said:


> Springtails probably would be a good food source, particularly if they can establish, you won't have to worry so much about acively feeding them. Or would they harrass the spiderlings too much? This is unfamiliar territory to me but fascinating. I love this species.


I've used springtails for two of Cyclocosmia truncata and Cyclocosmia torreya slings and it worked! As they gained 4th instar, they should be able to tackle pinhead crickets and trukistan roach hatchlings. I even used springtails for my Ummidia rongodwini and it also worked. The best springtails to feed them are the tropical pinks because they're twice smaller than a fruit fly. So they're quite big and beefy for a species of springtails.


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