Audax sling feeding

[Theraphosphor]

I found a Phidippus audax spiderling on the ceiling, named it Harley, and took it in. A bit bigger than a sesame seed. I've been feeding it D. melanogaster every day, and they're dying in there, but it's not clear that they were killed by the spider, since another fly I kept separately as a "control" died on its own. Harley's abdomen looks a *tad* bigger than when first caught, and the abdomens of the flies are shriveled. One of them was stuck to a silk thread when I went to remove it, which may be a good sign.

This time, though, something weird happened - I walked in and saw the fly close to the spider's hammock, still alive with what looked like a shriveled abdomen, and then it walked around for a bit and died several minutes later.

I threw in some tiny white springtails for a change, but the background of the little sauce cup I have the spider in is also white, so I'm worried the springtails might be difficult to see. One of my relatives is growing fig saplings indoors and gets fungus gnats (smaller than fruit flies), but I'm a bit apprehensive to feed semi-wild prey, even though the spider was also caught indoors.

 

[jbooth]

How dry is it in there? Are the flies out of food? These don't scavenge well, so I might try the gnat considering it's a wild spider. Ought to eat springtails, dunno.

 

[Theraphosphor]

Lightly misting inside spider enclosure, making sure not to create droplets big enough for Harley to drown in. Considering putting a tiny dab of mashed organic banana for both the flies and the spider.

 

[Ultum4Spiderz]

Any pictures of the spider and it’s enclosure that sounds very tiny!!

 

[Theraphosphor]

Harley seems really hungry based on abdomen size, but didn't go for the single fungus gnat I provided. If plopping three in there doesn't work, I might just have to let the poor thing go. I'm misting the enclosure, too.

 

[jbooth]

You see it drink? My guess is it's dehydrated if it isn't eating and the flies dried up like that... but should drink from droplets off the sides, so who knows? Got any moist substrate in there? There's also a possibility it can't eat, bad molt or something, dunno.

 

[Theraphosphor]

You see it drink? My guess is it's dehydrated if it isn't eating and the flies dried up like that... but should drink from droplets off the sides, so who knows? Got any moist substrate in there? There's also a possibility it can't eat, bad molt or something, dunno.

Saw it drink after doing a better-quality misting last night. Maybe I'll give it some mashed organic banana. That seemed to help Ellie, my other jumper.

 

[Theraphosphor]

Abdomen looks a bit bigger after watering and adding three fungus gnats, but it's kind of hard to tell because of the distortion from the lid. Still unclear as to whether the gnats died on their own. Harley shows no interest in the melanogaster that's currently running around, but just spun a second hammock even though the first one still exists.

 

[Theraphosphor]

Well, Harley took down the melanogaster! Maybe putting a pipe cleaner in the enclosure for enrichment helped.

 

[Theraphosphor]

Hard to see here, but here's Harley's first kill post-molt.

 

[jbooth]

Good job, keep it up, it would long have been dead if you aren't doing something right lol. Hopefully it'll at least move on to hydei next molt. Yeah stuff to climb on definitely helps!