│★My Violin Spider

[Carli15]

Hey all, hopefully this is the correct place to be asking this question I'm still new and learning here so feel free to help me in the right direction if I'm doing this wrong...

┃★ I found a Violin spider {brown recluse, Sicariidae} in my back yard when it was chilling on my hand when I fell asleep in the pool and I woke up seeing it. I took it inside, gave it a cool fiber glass enclosure and placed a water dish and a fake piece of a branch with leaves for it to climb on. Then I threw in a half a mealworm, like I do when feeding my other 8 little slings of about 3mm's in size. I went to do some internet research and read up about this little guy and now it is named; Sylvester. I've been keeping this spider for the past 5 months. It has molted twice in this time and seems to be enjoying his enclosure and has it webbed from top to botten densely and like silky decorations everywhere. He's also a very good and aggressive eater and I've been filming him eating his mealworms (jist beautiful and fascinating to watch for me).
So my questions about Sylvester are these:

1. ☆ IF* I intend to keep Sylvester, will he grow much larger in captivity? Because I've measured him and compared it to the official information I found & it kind of seems like he's going to get larger than they usually do outside? So he will need a bigger enclosure?
2. ☆ Is it okay for me to keep Sylvester and take good care of him or should I release him to meet his hostile outside fate?
3. ☆ Has anyone here ever kept any wild outside spiders? And if so... Got any helpful advice?

I'll add some of the pictures I took a few hours ago. Sorry I couldn't get them in better quality but he's aggressive and I don't want to risk getting bitten if its not a necessity. Please don't scold me & get angry, I am honestly only posting this because I want to do whatever is the better option for the beautiful and lovely spider's well-being and health, that's all why I'm asking you guys for some input?? ​

Anyways... Hope everyone is having a good Sunday!! ​

 

[jbooth]

Enclosure looks fine, even if it makes the Guinness Book. Getting bitten by this is never necessary, it could be a closed casket funeral. Weird parasites and of course not knowing how long it will live/age are the problems I've had so far with wild caught true spiders. Some people love them, never went for one myself.

 

[NMTs]

No harm in keeping it - if it was a mature male I'd probably tell you to release it so it could reproduce, but it doesn't look mature yet even if it is male. The enclosure size is fine, too. That's the fattest recluse I've ever seen, though - might want to cut back on the feeding some. Cool spider.

 

[Biollantefan54]

Do you have any dorsal pics? I haven’t seen any recluses from that area so I’m curious as to what it looks like! I know some have really pretty patterns compared to the native US ones

 

[viper69]

Release

 

[Carli15]

Do you have any dorsal pics? I haven’t seen any recluses from that area so I’m curious as to what it looks like! I know some have really pretty patterns compared to the native US ones

I'll try to get you some better picfures tomorrow morning.