# huntsman with eggsac



## dragontears (Jan 4, 2007)

This is her third eggsac since she arrived on the boat from Ecuador.  The first one dried out before it was really given a chance, the second one she couldn't get detached from the wall and ended up spilling out all over the ground, this one she laid on December 15th and appears to be growing in size.  

How long do I have to wait to see little babies come out?  (assuming it is viable)


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## dragontears (Jan 9, 2007)

any input here?


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## Arachnophilist (Jan 9, 2007)

IM not sure but I would guess a couple of months at least. someone will know for sure dont worry.


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## KUJordan (Jan 9, 2007)

if it is like most other true spiders, it should only be around 20-30 days.  good luck with it though.  i hope this one works out for you and her.


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## dragontears (Jan 19, 2007)

So she is kind of answering my question for me.  Last night the eggsac was so big it was starting to split at the seams and you can see the little slings in there wiggling around.  My next question is: can they stay community for a while or do I have to separate them into individual vials ASAP?


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## dragontears (Jan 28, 2007)

Babies are everywhere!  

The huntsman slings started dispersing on the 26th.  We separated 23 babies on the 27th and 65 more babies today.  The female is still holding the egg sac and there are still babies emerging as well as a few still wandering around that we couldn't get separated without disturbing the mom too much.  We have about 70 in individual jars and we're thinking of setting up a few (maybe up to 10 per jar) communal jars to see if they cannibalize each other or if they ignore each other.  

The babies are so adorable!

Mamma on the eggsac:






Eggsac growing larger:






babies emerging:






a not-so-good picture of mamma and a few of the babies:


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## P. Novak (Jan 28, 2007)

Congrats!!!!!


Its like that movie, Arachnophobia!


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## dragontears (Jan 28, 2007)

we just went through feeding round 1...some of the fruit flies didn't even hit the ground before they were spider food.


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## Stylopidae (Jan 28, 2007)

dragontears said:


> we just went through feeding round 1...some of the fruit flies didn't even hit the ground before they were spider food.



Erh...friut flies...bad idea. Can lead to moulting problems


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## dragontears (Jan 29, 2007)

why?  I hadn't heard that.  Should I switch to pin heads?  The slings are really small, I don't think they can take something much bigger than a fruit fly.

Reactions: Dislike 1


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## dragontears (Jan 29, 2007)

never mind.  I found a thread explaining the potential risk with FFF.  I'm only planning on feeding them on this diet until their next molt or two when they will be big enough to eat crickets with no problem.  Do you think that this will be ok?


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## funnylori (Jan 29, 2007)

I fed my purple fruit flys exclusively for 3 months and didnt have any problems. I think they should be fine. It wasnt until after she was big enough to take petco sized small crickets that I realized it could lead to a dietary deficiency problem. At least you know the flys will not eat the spider...


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## Stylopidae (Jan 29, 2007)

I think they'll be OK for temporary feeders. I was raising some spitting spiders on friut flies and lost the entire culture to moulting problems. Conversely, I raised my H. maculata to the third instar on friut flies with no problems.


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## cacoseraph (Jan 29, 2007)

nice work!

with a little care you could easily introduce this species to the hobby


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## Arachnophilist (Jan 29, 2007)

I dont know if they will accept them but I often use chopped up or pre killed small crickets to feed babies. try a 2 week killed and left in the communal jar. see if they will share a meal. I dont think a temporary diet of them should be too harmful though.. but it also wouldnt hurt to try throwin in some cricket bits.


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## funnylori (Jan 29, 2007)

I am going to try giving mine all the extra cricket legs that seem to show up everywhere... One still hasnt eaten, the other is Fat!


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## dragontears (Jan 29, 2007)

we separated 95 more today!  The total is now up to 183!!!

I'm not sure if the mom is done now or not.  She is still hanging on to the egg sac, but there don't appear to be slings coming out.  I'll check her again tomorrow.

I've set up communal jars ranging from 4 to 20 per jar, thus far they are far more interested in food than each other, but we'll see if that continues.  All of them are eating well and plumping up quite nicely.  woohoo!


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## P. Novak (Jan 30, 2007)

Wow, that is alot of babies! Keep us updated on the growing process of these little ones! Some more pictures would be nice as well!





dragontears said:


> we separated 95 more today!  The total is now up to 183!!!
> 
> I'm not sure if the mom is done now or not.  She is still hanging on to the egg sac, but there don't appear to be slings coming out.  I'll check her again tomorrow.
> 
> I've set up communal jars ranging from 4 to 20 per jar, thus far they are far more interested in food than each other, but we'll see if that continues.  All of them are eating well and plumping up quite nicely.  woohoo!


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## dragontears (Jan 30, 2007)

quick pictures:












We just checked on her, and there are more slings coming.

Reactions: Like 1


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## dragontears (Jan 30, 2007)

54 more today!  Total now is 237!

I think she might be done now.  There are a couple left in the tank with her that we couldn't get out, but she has dropped the egg sac and it looks pretty empty.  Hopefully tomorrow she'll move out of the way so we can get the remaining babies out and remove the egg sac to make sure it is empty.  Now I just want her to get a good meal and lots of water in her...she looks so dehydrated at the moment.


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## cacoseraph (Jan 31, 2007)

if you want to lock this species in to the hobby i would suggest keeping something like at least 50 and then slow grow half and fast grow half

just like tarantulas, it is typical of true spider males to mature and die before the females mature. granted a few of the extremely fast maturing females and extremely slow growing males might jive, but why leave it to change?


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## dragontears (Jan 31, 2007)

I'm going to keep about 20 myself.  Botarby8s and SwiftInverts are interested in the rest.  I'm going to try a couple small scale experiments with mine (communal vs individual, growth rate, etc) and when I get a mature male, I'll try to breed back to the mom or hope I have another female ready.

We couldn't find the few stranglers in the tank today, so either they got out into the house or they are hiding in the substrate really well.  Regardless, the egg sac is empty and the mom is feeding again.  She already has gotten a lot of plumpness back to her abdomen.


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## funnylori (Feb 8, 2007)

One of mine has officially molted. It was the one that ate on the first day I had it. The other one just finally had its first meal yesterday, I am not sure what is up with that.


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## dragontears (Feb 8, 2007)

several of mine are molting now.  They started on the 6th and are still on a roll.


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## dragontears (Feb 11, 2007)

she laid another egg sac today!  This one is much smaller than the last one though so I doubt there are as many (as to be expected for her fourth one).  We'll see if this one is viable and healthy.


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## funnylori (Feb 15, 2007)

Holy!? Wow. Wow. 

One of mine seems to be MIA... I am not sure if the tiny cricket ate it <doubtful> or it escaped when I wasn't looking <most likely>... I have been known to leave lids off of 2-3 T at a time enclosures for a few hours before I remember that they were open. So far, I have been lucky with that... The only escape I ever had was a bonified escape where the sling wedged out through a gap in the lid. Hopefully, the huntsman feeds off of the meal moths that are in my room instead of me...


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## nepenthes (Feb 15, 2007)

What are you going to do if this egg sack survives?   

do you have space for how ever many more this time around!

cool spiderlings!


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## dragontears (Feb 15, 2007)

yes, I have space.  I only have 40-ish left from the first sac at this point and some of those are spoken for as well.  By the time the next sac hatches I should only have a few left.  I'm not expecting the second sac to have as many slings as it is much smaller than the last one.  I'll probably keep a good portion of this next sac.


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## dragontears (Mar 15, 2007)

this most recent egg sac has started splitting open.  We should be separating babies out within the next few days. :clap:


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## Mr. Mordax (Mar 15, 2007)

All I have to say is "WOW."  :clap:  Few animals I come across have such reproductive capability.


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## funnylori (Mar 19, 2007)

Amazing! Your mama spider is a real winner! 

I still haven't found the one that got away...  But the one that did stay finally molted again, and is doing well. 

My mom is going to bomb the entire house when I leave here in a couple of weeks... Corvallis here I come! Again.


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## dragontears (Mar 19, 2007)

mine little ones are eating crickets now, so they are much easier to care for.  Fruit flies are nice, but a pain in the ass.

I'll keep you posted to the number that hatches out of this eggsac.


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## dragontears (Mar 26, 2007)

So I separated 135 slings from eggsac #4!  There are a few left in the sac, but I think there will still be less than 150 by the time she's done.  Hopefully she'll drop the sac soon so I can feed her again.  She always gets so skinny and I worry about her.


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## kahoy (Mar 28, 2007)

Heteropoda venatoria (spelling?)

very common on Philippines...

i have a lot of them on our house ;P


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## dragontears (Mar 31, 2007)

She dropped the egg sac...188 total slings from this one!  :clap:


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## tacoma0680 (Apr 3, 2007)

Hey i was just wonder why the fruit flys cause molting issues and if that also can relate to tarantulas


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## funnylori (Apr 7, 2007)

I found my missing huntsman today!!! It was crawling around on Mike! That means that it 1. Did escape in my room in Hillsboro, 2. Survived in my room for more than a couple of months, 3. Managed to get packed up in my stuff and moved to Corvallis with me!

It is well fed looking, and at least a molt ahead of the contained huntsman!

Reactions: Like 1


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## dragontears (Apr 7, 2007)

how random!  Fun though!

The new babies are now all eating and happily running around their jars at the moment.  I still have them in small community groups as the last clutch seemed to do better that way until right before their second molt....then they started eating each other.  :wall:


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## funnylori (Apr 12, 2007)

So I thought it was the missing huntsman... Until I found another one...  

Now I am thinking my appartment had a few friends hatch out after I moved in... I am keeping them both just to be sure though. And, as far as my parents are concerned I still found it.  They were gonna gas the house soon, but they called it off after I said I found it. I want to make sure this job/appartment thing works out before they poison the house.


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## gunslinger (Apr 12, 2007)

Hey Lori, post some pics of these huntsmen your finding somewhere, I wanna see em (sorry i need many true spider fixes daily or the cravings overtake me)

And tacoma, I believe the fruit flies may cause molting problems because they do not provide a wide enough range of nutrients.....however there are many people who have raised spiderlings on drosophila that have not had problems.....I think the jury is still out.


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## KyuZo (Apr 12, 2007)

dragontears said:


> mine little ones are eating crickets now, so they are much easier to care for.  Fruit flies are nice, but a pain in the ass.
> 
> I'll keep you posted to the number that hatches out of this eggsac.


Hey Renee, 
to make things easier when you are using fruit flies, just dump them in a bowl of water.  then they'll get stuck on top of the water, but they won't drown and use a Q-tip or a tooth pick and scoop them one at a time to feed your huntsman spiderling.  This way they won't run around while you control the amount that you feed your spiderlings.
jason

Reactions: Like 1


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## dragontears (Apr 17, 2007)

She laid egg sac #5 today!    This one is even smaller than the last one, but still, she amazes me.  I still have 20+ from the last egg sac!


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## Mr. Mordax (Apr 17, 2007)

That's amazing!  This is certainly lending itself to new information on arachnid husbandry.

She's a talented mom, either way.    Gods forbid if you get a breeding pair from the slings.


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## cacoseraph (Apr 23, 2007)

true spiders can make an insane number of sacs

i had a black widow make 13, 10 of which had viables in them


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## dragontears (May 11, 2007)

well, 21 days into sac #5 she decided to eat it.  Not sure why.  She ate a couple crickets and is looking quite fat and ready to lay more eggs (or explode from overeating).  

Cacoseraph - did the widow lay 10 consecutive viable sacs with the 3 infertile ones last or were the infertile ones mixed in intermittantly?


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## cacoseraph (May 11, 2007)

the last ones were all crappy looking.

the first three were full blown eggsacs. low 100's of eggs in them. then the next 4-6 tapered off and by the end got raggedy and full of like 20-50 eggs only. the last several she made were just junk.  this was over a couple few year period, by the way!


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## funnylori (May 13, 2007)

It's too bad the last sac was devoured. Mine died the other day, as did the two other spiders that looked like huntsman.  

No little true spiders for me. Even the red backed jumper I found at Homedepot the other day died on me. I am wondering if it had something to do with my apartment getting really hot last week, and the spiders being so close to the window...


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## dragontears (Jun 3, 2007)

well, she just made a sixth egg sac today!  I have no idea if it is viable and I have my doubts as she ate the last one, but here's hoping!


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## moose35 (Jun 3, 2007)

cool good luck with this 1.
 the little 1's i got from you are up to an 1 1/2" already and completly murdering medium crickets. they are great hunters(hence the name huntsman.)

             well good luck

                        moose


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## Irks (Jun 6, 2007)

I have 4 from your first eggsack, the biggest is about 2" now. They tackle flies out of mid-air if they fly close, as well as any grasshopper/cricket I throw in. Truly awesome spiders, thank you for making them available.


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## dragontears (Jun 10, 2007)

neat.  It's always fun to know where my little kids go.


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## Irks (Sep 12, 2007)

*Size question*

Hey dragontears, I was curious how big your mother is/was when she laid the eggsack. I'm just curious how big I can expect my little ones to get... they're 3.5 inches now. (2nd picture is from my phonecamera)


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## dragontears (Sep 19, 2007)

sorry it's taken me a while to get back to you...my female rarely comes out for a good measurement.

She measured in today at 4inches!


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## Irks (Oct 19, 2007)

3.75 inches now. Pretty sure she won't molt again, since she hasn't in months, but she is slowly getting a little bigger.


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## ArachnidArmy (Oct 23, 2007)

All of these photos are brilliant! Well done


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