An unfortunate find…

[SavageDigital]

The large mass to the right of the photo appears to be a maggot of some sort while the smaller white nematodes are clustered around it.

I agree totally (and mentioned it at the end of the first paragraph in the original post).

 

[cacoseraph]

Yeah, I too would like to hear how you go about doing this. As was already stated, nematodes are *not* mites.
In tarantulas, nematodes are injested...thus, taken into the stomach where they lay eggs and release a bacteria (I hope I'm remembering this correctly) that the offspring feed off of. Thus, the offspring grow, lay eggs, and the cycle continues. They mass reproduce inside the tarantula's stomach until the spider is so complely consumed they start *falling out* via the mouth and anus.
RIESM has been working on a fix for nematode infestation....I hope they get it mastered soon.

Drying out the container would, IMO not be very effective, seeing as how the nematodes are *inside* the spider's body. The spider would suffer from the effects of dehydration long before the nematodes would.

i thought ingestion was almost patently ruled out as an invection vector due ot the micrometric filters present in tarantula (and other mygalo's, as here) mouths?

thought vector was unknown

 

[Katronmaster]

I know this sounds heartless, but those are some of the best infestation photos I've seen. Has it yet been determined if there were two creatures involved in it or just the nematodes?

 

[Heather]

So sorry for the loss.

You did do an awesome job showing the infestation... poor wittle guy

Heather