Bad loss today

[PoPpiLLs]

My juvenile female p.rufilata today she was 4.5" I got her from Rayn out of his personal breeding stock and for a price that you would not believe I had her for about 7 months and she molted twice and was doing fine until a month ago i checked on her she was moving real slow so I put her in a ICU for 5 days and she was back to normal, eating and moving like lighting until last night night she was barley moving so I put her back in ICU and by the morning she was gone I know ill never get chance to get another p.rufilata female at that rice again I'm thinking of trying to trade my female b. boehmei to replace her.

 

[crpy]

sorry for your loss

 

[TalonAWD]

Sorry for your loss. Do you have an idea of what did her in?

 

[PoPpiLLs]

TalonAWD I did notice that her droppings on the tank wall went from being white to a brown color

 

[TalonAWD]

I don't think the color of her droppings has anything to do with her dealth... What was she eating?

 

[PoPpiLLs]

I was feeding her discoids from my colony I have 50 other tarantulas that I feed from the same colony and they are fine

 

[Mina]

I'm so sorry!!!! Are all of your other Ts ok?

 

[PoPpiLLs]

Mina all the rest of my spiders are doing fine

 

[betuana]

I don't think the color of her droppings has anything to do with her dealth.

Well, it might have something to do with it. We don't really know alot about tarantulal immune systems unfortunately, at least not compared to other animals. However, I know that with quite a few animals, a change in color or consistency of droppings can indicate a health problem (especially on a controlled diet), such as injury or infection. (With a random diet like with wild animals or free roaming pets it could be caused by dietary changes...). Without more studies done on Ts it would be hard to say if such a change would also be a warning sign with them as well. I do know with hawks and falcons they say to monitor all mutes (droppings) and castings for color, consistency, etc, because any change could be the first warning of a problem. (Cats and dogs too, and snakes, etc). But of course, those are all vertebrates, so its possible it just doesn't apply to inverts. However, seeing something normally white turn brown, without any change in diet, and (presumably) without major environmental changes (ie. new substrate), would seem to indicate SOMETHING was going on....

Just my thoughts, but I fully admit to be completely speculating here, and operating only on knowledge of OTHER creatures, so I may be completely off! :razz:

To the OP - very very sorry to hear about your loss. Always hard. It sounds like you did the best you could to save her. I hope your breeding project works out and helps you recover!

 

[TalonAWD]

Well my GBB has white droppings and brown droppings and its perfectly fine. I feed her a variety of food and the feeders always eat different things (sometimes colored fish flakes some times cricket feed etc) Thats why I said that the color has nothing to do with it.
When you use the bathroom, does your poop always come out blackish brown?
I just think that it might be something else since it went through an episode once before. Maybe something in its enclosure? Its probably not the food because other inverts ate from the same batch. Either way its a terrible loss.

 

[betuana]

Sure, if there is any variation in the diet, or the feeder's diet, then the color may not mean anything.

My thought was that if it were all very consistent with no change whatsoever in diet that it might indicate a problem.

With many mammals - if it becomes black and tarry it can indicate internal bleeding. It can be different colors based on diet too, but it can also indicate a problem.

But as I said, as far as inverts go its complete speculation, and would only be useful as an indicator if the prey items fed, and the diet fed to the prey items, remained EXACTLY the same, to rule out just a dietary change causing it.

But yeah, this was a second occurrence of the symptoms, so unless that color change showed up both times, and no other times, it probably wasn't related.

And as mentioned before, I'm completely speculating, I don't know alot about inverts (heck, thats why I started learning about Ts to begin with, :? and then decided to get one, is that I felt undereducated about them), so anything I say about something like this is completely opinion only! I can hardly claim to be an expert, or even experienced, I openly admit to still being a newbie! :8o

It would be nice if causes of these sort of deaths could be figured out - it seems like so often we don't know why. Very sad, if we knew the cause we might be able to take steps to prevent it....