A. Seemanni near death?

KyraGoddess

Arachnopeon
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Jun 10, 2019
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It's still the same. It is in death curl at all times now, but still moving a lot. I'll still keep an eye on her and hope, she gets better. I'll only update again if things get better or worse. If i don't update, it's still the same.
 

Thekla

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Oct 13, 2017
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Have you tried raising the temperature? Not with a heat lamp or mat, but overall... a space heater maybe? Or you could put her enclosure in a bigger one and attach a heat pad to the outer one, so, it gets some safe secondary heat.
Maybe it'll help to boost its metabolism a bit. I guess you don't have much to lose at this point.
 

KyraGoddess

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Jun 10, 2019
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Somethings happening, but i don't know what. She flipped over on her back and she has something strange red / black on her mouth, i don't know what it is. It wasn't there when i last checked. I will post a photo soon and try to remove whatever it is on her mouth. Still death curl. No signs of premolt. She doesn't move that much, just trying to get out of death curl, but when her legs move a little bit further from her body, she kinda cramps and they are put under the body again. I don't have any clues.

Maybe just a little bit of substrate, i removed most of it from her. But all i can do now, is to wait until it gets better or worse. Though i think this may be her last moments.
 

Poonjab

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Any signs of defication around the enclosure? Could it be impaction?
 
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KyraGoddess

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I found no good translation for "dedication" in german. It would be translated with something like "engagement" and that confuses me a little bit. But there's nothing weird in the enclosure or on her other than that little bit of substrate i removed. She walked not quite well after that, but did move without going into death curl for like 2-3 minutes. Then it went into death curl again.
 

cold blood

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I found no good translation for "dedication" in german. It would be translated with something like "engagement" and that confuses me a little bit. But there's nothing weird in the enclosure or on her other than that little bit of substrate i removed. She walked not quite well after that, but did move without going into death curl for like 2-3 minutes. Then it went into death curl again.
it was a spelling error...i fixed it:)
 

KyraGoddess

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Ah thanks, now i see :) No poop in the enclosure as far as i can see. I looked up Impaction, though i heard of it already. There's nothing on her butt that seems problematic though.

Another Update: It's still alive and struggling.

My brother and i found a website randomly, on which nematodes are described very precisely. There were some symptoms listed, which seem to be the same as my seemanni has at the moment, regarding the standing on the tip of her feet and then the nearly death curl with the feet under its body. There was also mentioned, that substrate sticks around the mouthpart, which it had and i removed as posted before. Could it be possible that it has nematodes? I checked her mouthparts once again, but theres nothing abnormal about it. After i removed the substrate, i washed the mouthparts a little bit with fresh water.

Could it be in an early stage of nematodes? Should i treat her against nematodes without knowing for sure? I'm still kinda lost there, trying to know what's wrong.
 

Ungoliant

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Could it be in an early stage of nematodes?
Is the tarantula wild-caught? Do you have any other wild-caught spiders showing the same symptoms?

Parasitic nematodes are associated with specific host species and are generally found on wild-caught tarantulas.

From @boina, a microbiologist:

Ok, I'm going against the majority opinion here: When what you see really are nematodes they are harmless for your T. Half of all nematodes are NOT parasites but live in soil ( http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/Creatures/nematode/soil_nematode.htm ) and they are actually GOOD for your tarantulas since they may eat bacteria and rotting organic matter, (it's the same with mites btw: most are GOOD for your T). Even parasitic nematodes are very specialized and I would very much think that nematodes that infect tarantulas may infect other arachnids but not isopods. Now, of course there could be larvae and eggs of parasitic nematodes in the soil but they wouldn't look like wriggly worms and wherever would they come from? They must have been in a spider at one point in their lives.
I think the only way to get nematodes is to buy an infested WC tarantula. Whatever you have in that soil is harmless or even helpful because it is LIVING IN THE SOIL. However there's a small possibility that these nematodes (if that's what they are) are parasites of the isopods. In that case they still wouldn't be harmful to the spider, but they'd kill your isopod colony off...
(Btw, I'm a biologist)
No. Parasitic nematodes have to come from somewhere, meaning another - wild cought - tarantula. They don't just appear out of thin air.
Even the infected crickets need to have gotten their tarantula parasites from somewhere. Did the crickets cohabit with a wild cought tarantula? Parasites are specific. Tarantula nematodes would not be expected to infect anything else, not even true spiders. If you find a nematode in a cricket - a whole different group of animal, as in insect versus arachnid - that nematode would not be able to infect a tarantula.

Nematodes have a pretty complicated life cycle, though. Even if a cricket would be carrying 'dauerlarva' forms of nematodes, those would have to come from somewhere, as in an infected tarantula, it and it would have to be recently. In that case you would need to have a cycle, form cricket to tarantula to cricket to tarantula and so on. It only works if you keep wild caught and infected tarantulas in close proximity to your crickets and get a new infected tarantula every time the other one dies. It's just not feasible.

The claim that infected crickets can infect tarantulas has been around since forever but it is still an urban (or a tarantula -) myth.
 

KyraGoddess

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Jun 10, 2019
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She's still alive, but nothing did change. She still goes into a nearly death curl and moves weirdly.

I check her over every few days to see, if something changed or if i could see something weird on her body, but there is nothing unusual.
 

OzzakInEire

Arachnopeon
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Mar 18, 2020
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damn... make me sad to hear she's suffering for so long... :(

ps. if you decide to euthanasia her I heard a good method is to put her in the fridge... makes it painless...
 

KyraGoddess

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Jun 10, 2019
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I don't feel comfortable giving up on her yet... I still can't tell what the problem is and if euthanasia is really necessary. I thought about it a lot though, but i think i couldn't forgive me, if i euthanize her and she could have recovered.
 

homachka

Arachnopeon
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May 2, 2020
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I don't feel comfortable giving up on her yet... I still can't tell what the problem is and if euthanasia is really necessary. I thought about it a lot though, but i think i couldn't forgive me, if i euthanize her and she could have recovered.
did she made it?
 

KyraGoddess

Arachnopeon
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Jun 10, 2019
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Yes, she seems to be nearly back to normal again. Her movement is still a little bit weird, but she moves a lot faster. She didn't molt, it got a little bit better every day and i didn't change anything since then. I don't feel comfortable offering food yet, but her booty is still big enough and i see her drinking a lot, so i will wait a little bit longer with that.
 

homachka

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May 2, 2020
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Yes, she seems to be nearly back to normal again. Her movement is still a little bit weird, but she moves a lot faster. She didn't molt, it got a little bit better every day and i didn't change anything since then. I don't feel comfortable offering food yet, but her booty is still big enough and i see her drinking a lot, so i will wait a little bit longer with that.
im glad everything turned out ok. best wishes to you and tour spider!
 

KyraGoddess

Arachnopeon
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Jun 10, 2019
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Hello,

It's been a long time but i wanted to update again on that case.

The A. Seemanni molted, got better every day (though she lost a lot of hair on her abdomen until the next molt without kicking hairs in my presence, but it's okay now) and is now a healthy little tarantula and she even seems to be a female.

I still don't know what the problem exactly was, but here is what i did:
- keeping her warmer & more moist
- always kept her waterdish full
- sometimes check her abdomen and underside for mites or something similar and keeping it a little bit cleaner with an unused paint brush (getting the substrate just a little bit off of her)

Maybe it will help in the future for people with the same problem, but that's what worked for me.

Thanks a lot to everyone who supported me and gave advice!
 
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