Avic Problems Again

[Trenor]

Edit* Never mind. She went all fancy on me... lol
Most hobbyists I know, hot glue etc. a Dixie cup or bottle caps to the sidewall.

Many Avic. keepers do this not just for accessibility of the T but also for the keeper. It's easier to refill and clean a water bowl in a top opening enclosure. Lots of times when an Avic gets settled they block the water bowl with webbing and what have you... Trying to pour most of the water in the bowl and not on the substrate can be tricky. Thus, why I prefer inverted or side opening enclosures for Avics. Much easier for maintenance.

That's actually a very solid idea.. I have never thought of that Thanks! I'll now do this for all of them ><

I do the cup in a cup wall setup for most of my Pokies. It makes water maintenance really easy with a top opening enclosure. I hot glue one cup to the wall and drop a second cup in to fill with water. This lets me replace the water cup if needed.

Here is a close up of the cup in a cup water dish on my old P.met enclosure. Also note the larger hole above the cup. This lets me (or someone else if I'm out of town) water them with a dropper without opening the lid.

 

[darkness975]

It has a bottle cap and pebble for water

Listen to other people in this thread in regards to fixing your set up. Also, take the pebble out. All that will do is grow bacteria which could be harmful.

Use 2oz souffle cups instead of a bottle cap. Looks nicer and you can get a ton of them for cheap.

You said it ate and then a bit later you started noticing odd behavior. Like others have said post pictures and videos but I am just going to throw out a possibility here and say maybe it was a bad prey item that might have had a parasite or been exposed to something.

But pictures/videos would definitely help us.

 

[CABIV]

Well, she's gone. This is making me nuts. They go downhill so fast, there doesn't seem to be any way to recover them. Pictures in the following post.

Snap some more recent photos of the tarantula and some full photos of the enclosure. We'll see if there is something we can help with. From the two you have there the enclosure seems to be a exo-terra or something like it with sparse furnishings. which depending on the setup could be your problem.

Send us some pics and we'll help as much as we can.

I've gotta agree with a few others here too on your enclosure. It looks like you have just a piece of cork tube in there with nothing else which isn't going to cut it for avics at all.

Essentially, that is what it is, with a water dish. The problem I've had in the past, is that the furnishings offered too many places for crickets and roaches to hide. They seemed to survive almost indefinitely in the tarantula's tank. You would not believe the amount of dead uneaten things I would find. Removing the "hiding" spots reduced this to pretty much zero (the odd dubia seemed to be able to elude the pink toe).

I also suspected that unnecessary furnishings would risk getting soiled and causing a problem as well. It seemed safer to leave them out.

I did purchase some "vines"s with the intention of placing them around the top, but I never did install them, mostly due to the above concerns and the fact that by that time (when the above photos were taken), the spider seemed healthy.

Indeed, most of my other spiders are kept in relatively sparse tanks, but then they spend most of their time in the burrows they dug.

if one of my spiders gets fat and disappears and than reappears a while little noticeably skinnier, i just feed them again.
also, its genus-species. no sub species.
it looks perfectly healthy and normal to me.

It refused to eat or drink, though I did try. It would not drink when placed over the water dish, and it didn't take the cricket I gave it. It didn't eat the last two feedings either.

This can happen, particularly after a molt when they are in their canopy.

They don't refuse to molt. A video of the odd movements would be useful. Many people see odd movements that are perfectly normal once a video is provided.

I've come to recognize these shaky movements as a bad sign. Whenever I see the spider acting this way, its always been within a day or two of it kicking the bucket. Knowing they are hydraulic in nature, and seeing as it lost a lot of weight, one wonders if these movements are a result of not enough fluids to operate their legs.

If it were still plump, I'd suspect the Pre-molt angle where they might start loosing their grip on things, but I guess I assumed a spider in bad health might not molt readily.

Some of those symptoms could be caused by pre-molt. In the days and weeks leading up to the actual molt, the old exoskeleton begins to disconnect from the nervous system. During this time, your Avic may not seem to have as good a grip on smooth surfaces and may not seem as responsive or agile.

I did anticipate this, and so when I saw it go into hiding a few weeks ago, I had assumed this was the case.

Confirm that she is still rejecting food, and if she is, make sure she is hydrated. (It's important for tarantulas to be adequately hydrated when molting, because they need to produce lubricating fluid to separate from their old exoskeletons.) When she does molt, it may be time to rehouse her into an enclosure that has more anchor points for webbing. (Plastic plants work well for this.)

I have the materials, i guess next time (if there is, I'm starting to not feel good about killing all these spiders. might try a different species) I will install them.

I don't know that this necessarily applies to your Avic (mine is elderly, and yours is a juvenile), but my old Avicularia avicularia fasted for 13 months before molting. When she first started to reject food, I assumed that she was in pre-molt, but 11 months in, I began to wonder if she was dying of old age, because she was skinny, lethargic, and looked clumsier than normal when she moved. I didn't expect her to molt successfully.

Then I realized that she was no longer going down to her water dish and wondered if she might just be dehydrated. So I reached in and held the water dish up to her level, and she drank for a good five minutes until I could no longer hold that awkward position. So then I mounted a high-level water dish for her, thinking it might be easier for her to find and use, and she took a long drink from that as well.

A week later, she finally molted. And then she molted again 10 months later. After that second molt, she actually seemed to be better than she had been during the previous instar.

I think I'm going to go that route in the future. It stayed up there in its tube that whole time and if it didn't feel like going to the bottom, it may have not had a chance to drink. I'd seen it go to the water dish before, but obviously it won't go down there if it doesn't feel like it.

 

[CABIV]

The opisthoma is pretty shrunken. There are "angular" parts of it difficult to photograph, but its definitely not as plump as it was.







This is the enclosure. It had webbing up near the top of the tube, but then i havent had many pink toes web at all.

 

[Trenor]

The opisthoma is pretty shrunken. There are "angular" parts of it difficult to photograph, but its definitely not as plump as it was.







This is the enclosure. It had webbing up near the top of the tube, but then i havent had many pink toes web at all.

That is a pretty barren enclosure for a Avic. Remember they live in the trees and as webbers like to have lots of clutter for webbing anchor points. Is the top still screen? If so, with as heavy ventilation as that would give out of the top and you living in NJ running winter heat. It is easy for the enclosure to get very dry humidity wise (even if there is water in the water dish) and the T to dry out quickly. A cap water dish would likely not give off enough humidity to keep up with the top venting enclosure IMO.

Avics are not hard to keep but if you get them outside their range they go downhill quickly. How many other Ts do you have and what kind are they?

 

[viper69]

The same thing can be achieved with 2 dixie cups, if your more frugal or have limited space. Just Hot glue the first dixie cup where you want it, and slide the second dixie cup into the first one so you can pull it out for cleaning.
The soap dish certainly looks more upscale, though.

I always forget about double cupping, even though I have recommended it to people in the past hah. I like that dish because it allows the T to drink in a very easy posture, ie walking up to the water's edge. It's upscale for sure, but not that pricey.

 

[viper69]

The opisthoma is pretty shrunken. There are "angular" parts of it difficult to photograph, but its definitely not as plump as it was.







This is the enclosure. It had webbing up near the top of the tube, but then i havent had many pink toes web at all.

You did a great describing the issue, your words match perfectly. This is what I pictured. Cage aside, I'd be surprised if this Avic makes it at this point. BUT, never bet against mother nature. All you can do is water it and hope for the best.

Oh- sorry I read your later post.

How long have you been keeping Ts? and Pink Toes?

 

[darkness975]

It is easy for the enclosure to get very dry humidity wise (even if there is water in the water dish) and the T to dry out quickly.

I keep my arid species (like G. porteri and B. smithi) in Kritter Keepers with just a water dish. Seems that even those tend to be a little better with the drying out.

 

[Ungoliant]

What style enclosure is that?

It's an Exo Terra Mini/Tall (I know, it's more space than she needs) with the foam backing removed and the screen lid covered with a thin sheet of cotton to discourage Skyler from climbing on the screen.

I learned from experience with my first Avic that mounting cork vertically onto the glass wall is not the best for feeding and maintenance. So instead, we built a treehouse. Skyler spends most of her time in the treehouse, and the horizontal orientation makes it great for feeding.

When it was new and unwebbed (the foam tubes are a redundant safety feature to prevent impalement on the support sticks in the event of a fall):


Skyler has gradually built a nice web inside the cork log with narrow entrances on both ends.


She's actually not all that interested in the plastic leaves, although she did incorporate some of them into her entrance and uses them as foot rests when she sits on her "porch."

 

[Trenor]

It's an Exo Terra Mini/Tall (I know, it's more space than she needs) with the foam backing removed and the screen lid covered with a thin sheet of cotton to discourage Skyler from climbing on the screen.

I learned from experience with my first Avic that mounting cork vertically onto the glass wall is not the best for feeding and maintenance. So instead, we built a treehouse. Skyler spends most of her time in the treehouse, and the horizontal orientation makes it great for feeding.

When it was new and unwebbed (the foam tubes are a redundant safety feature to prevent impalement on the support sticks in the event of a fall):


Skyler has gradually built a nice web inside the cork log with narrow entrances on both ends.


She's actually not all that interested in the plastic leaves, although she did incorporate some of them into her entrance and uses them as foot rests when she sits on her "porch."

Neat, I've thought about hot gluing a smaller cork rough to a flat back piece for some arboreals like my P.cam but I've not tried it yet.

 

[CABIV]

That is a pretty barren enclosure for a Avic. Remember they live in the trees and as webbers like to have lots of clutter for webbing anchor points. Is the top still screen? If so, with as heavy ventilation as that would give out of the top and you living in NJ running winter heat. It is easy for the enclosure to get very dry humidity wise (even if there is water in the water dish) and the T to dry out quickly. A cap water dish would likely not give off enough humidity to keep up with the top venting enclosure IMO.

I suspect this had a lot to do with it. It didn't seem stuffy in there, but I could "smell" the wetness, so I figured it was in good shape. I am also somewhat curious if there may be other environmental factors. Is it possible that there is "something in the air"? I wouldn't know what to look for.

Avics are not hard to keep but if you get them outside their range they go downhill quickly. How many other Ts do you have and what kind are they?

Oh- sorry I read your later post.

How long have you been keeping Ts? and Pink Toes?

I started in 2014 with a Pink Toe. I have had 4 including this one.

1. The first one was never really healthy (petsmart tarantula). Granted, I was new, but it lived from August 2014 to February 2015, ate only twice in that whole time (towards the end), and never really behaved right. I wasn't sure then, but from the others I've had, something was definitely up with the first. It started vomiting white stuff, and died shortly afterward. It was housed in a tall 12" square Exo-terra tank. At the time, some theorized it was wild caught and carrying a disease already.

2. The second seemed fine (also petsmart), and was eating and doing pinktoe things until around early summer 2015. It slowly wasted away until the fall, when it started vomitting white stuff as well. I observed it vomiting this time around. The description very closely matches a nematode infection as described in "The Tarantula Keeper's guide". I threw out everything in there and bleached the tank, and it sat unused until this fall when I housed my whipspider in there. He appears fine.

3. The third was a very small pink toe (barely 3/4") that I picked up at a specialist pet shop. I was aware of the risks of baby sized pink toe, but I figured my past failures were an infection, and that I had other tarantulas that were doing well. I placed it in a "jamie's tarantulas" juvenile arboreal enclosure. It lasted from April 2016 to August. It molted in July, but after the molt it stayed up in its hammock and didn't leave. it looked a little sick, so i gave it a light mist to get a few drops on its web. It drank this, and the next day it was active. It had a cricket in its fangs at 7PM, doing the "eating dance", but by midnight it was in death curl, the cricket unfinished. It appeared to be really sick, with clear fluids running from both ends. It really looked like it just sprung an internal leak and bled out.

4. This one, I purchased in September because I felt bad, and I thought I could give it a home. It had a bad leg, and it was sitting in the pet shop since February, apparently no one wanted it (even I picked up Pink toe #3 over this individual initially). It was living in a open critter keeper with zero furnishings all that time, with only a bottle cap of water (same as the one in the current tank), and it even managed to molt and grow a new leg.

I genuinely thought "here is a bigger pinktoe that has clearly withstood some sparse conditions, and since its not a "baby", it should be more resilient". instead, it was my shortest lived Pink Toe.

Otherwise I have:

Tarantulas
-Grammostola rosea/porteri (March 2015)
-Aphonopelma seemanni (October 2015
-Haplopelma lividum (October 2015)
-Euthalus sp. / Chilean Dwarf Flame Tarantula? (March 2016)

Scorpions
-Heterometrus petersii (March 2015)
-Hadogenes paucidens (July 2016)
-Hadrurus arizonensis (July 2016)

Whipspider
-Damon diadema (April 2016)

Whipscorpion
-Mastigoproctus giganteus (October 2016)

They all seem healthy for the most part. Most have burrows or hides that they spend most of their time in, but they come out enough (or are visible enough) that I'm not terribly concerned. My Euthalus just molted successfully a few days ago.

 

[CEC]

The opisthoma is pretty shrunken. There are "angular" parts of it difficult to photograph, but its definitely not as plump as it was.







This is the enclosure. It had webbing up near the top of the tube, but then i havent had many pink toes web at all.

Sorry for your loss.

It looks dehydrated. Next time place the your Avic's mouth in a full water bowl. Forget about feeding. They refuse to eat when dehydrated. Get it hydrated and try feeding again in a few weeks. This is the only thing you can do to nurse it back to health. Good luck.

 

[viper69]

I suspect this had a lot to do with it. It didn't seem stuffy in there, but I could "smell" the wetness, so I figured it was in good shape. I am also somewhat curious if there may be other environmental factors. Is it possible that there is "something in the air"? I wouldn't know what to look for.





I started in 2014 with a Pink Toe. I have had 4 including this one.

1. The first one was never really healthy (petsmart tarantula). Granted, I was new, but it lived from August 2014 to February 2015, ate only twice in that whole time (towards the end), and never really behaved right. I wasn't sure then, but from the others I've had, something was definitely up with the first. It started vomiting white stuff, and died shortly afterward. It was housed in a tall 12" square Exo-terra tank. At the time, some theorized it was wild caught and carrying a disease already.

2. The second seemed fine (also petsmart), and was eating and doing pinktoe things until around early summer 2015. It slowly wasted away until the fall, when it started vomitting white stuff as well. I observed it vomiting this time around. The description very closely matches a nematode infection as described in "The Tarantula Keeper's guide". I threw out everything in there and bleached the tank, and it sat unused until this fall when I housed my whipspider in there. He appears fine.

3. The third was a very small pink toe (barely 3/4") that I picked up at a specialist pet shop. I was aware of the risks of baby sized pink toe, but I figured my past failures were an infection, and that I had other tarantulas that were doing well. I placed it in a "jamie's tarantulas" juvenile arboreal enclosure. It lasted from April 2016 to August. It molted in July, but after the molt it stayed up in its hammock and didn't leave. it looked a little sick, so i gave it a light mist to get a few drops on its web. It drank this, and the next day it was active. It had a cricket in its fangs at 7PM, doing the "eating dance", but by midnight it was in death curl, the cricket unfinished. It appeared to be really sick, with clear fluids running from both ends. It really looked like it just sprung an internal leak and bled out.

4. This one, I purchased in September because I felt bad, and I thought I could give it a home. It had a bad leg, and it was sitting in the pet shop since February, apparently no one wanted it (even I picked up Pink toe #3 over this individual initially). It was living in a open critter keeper with zero furnishings all that time, with only a bottle cap of water (same as the one in the current tank), and it even managed to molt and grow a new leg.

I genuinely thought "here is a bigger pinktoe that has clearly withstood some sparse conditions, and since its not a "baby", it should be more resilient". instead, it was my shortest lived Pink Toe.

Otherwise I have:

Tarantulas
-Grammostola rosea/porteri (March 2015)
-Aphonopelma seemanni (October 2015
-Haplopelma lividum (October 2015)
-Euthalus sp. / Chilean Dwarf Flame Tarantula? (March 2016)

Scorpions
-Heterometrus petersii (March 2015)
-Hadogenes paucidens (July 2016)
-Hadrurus arizonensis (July 2016)

Whipspider
-Damon diadema (April 2016)

Whipscorpion
-Mastigoproctus giganteus (October 2016)

They all seem healthy for the most part. Most have burrows or hides that they spend most of their time in, but they come out enough (or are visible enough) that I'm not terribly concerned. My Euthalus just molted successfully a few days ago.

Just some bad luck, esp the first 2.

Don't let it stop you. When I first started with Pink Toes over 10 years ago, my first 3 versi died right in a row. I kept the slings too moist and the air was stuffy. I stopped trying Avics, focused on other NW and OW.

Then gave it another shot after about 3 years, during that time I read a lot, observed conversations etc. I took advice from a good dealer no longer in the hobby, keep them on the dry side and get a 2-3" one. I've been doing great ever since. Along the way some do die for no observable reason.

Keep at it.