black lights to see spider silk reccomendations

[brotato]

does anyone use black lights to see spider silk? i need to get one so i dont accidentally waste my precious baby’s silk if she has moved away or if i randomly find silk but i can’t pinpoint exactly where it is. i’d really appreciate any reccomendations

 

[Ultum4Spiderz]

does anyone use black lights to see spider silk? i need to get one so i dont accidentally waste my precious baby’s silk if she has moved away or if i randomly find silk but i can’t pinpoint exactly where it is. i’d really appreciate any reccomendations

What type of spider is it ? I had no clue certain lights illuminated the webbing! Cool

 

[brotato]

i have a female tan jumper! my enclosure is coming on wednesday and so is a black light i bought today after i posted this!

 

[The Snark]

While I have no clue about the refraction index of spider silk, which is likely to vary significantly between species, you should be wary of using a black light in the spider's vicinity. Some, or many black light sources are unfiltered. In essence, it may produce a powerful blast of UVC. This can be, roughly, a slower version equivalent to passing your hand through the flame of a propane torch to the retina of animals, and particularly salticids with acute optical ability. A quick glance over the webs would be reasonably safe but leaving a UVC source on for an extended period of time is a very bad idea.
AND... the crappy cheaply made UV lights, as the green pointer I have, leak a highly dangerous amount of the IR spectrum. Just shining the light on a wall causes instant eye irritation.
And and, don't trust the source or sales pitch. Chances are nearly all UV lights on the market come from a handful of factories in China where regulation and public safety does not exist in their vocabulary.

(My laser pointer, identical to those all over the market, irritated my eyes. So I cobbed together the test bed to measure the output. Common safe pointers have a 5 MW output. This thing is up around 250 MW going by how fast it drains the battery. And it does not have the IR filter. An extra expense in manufacturing. Checking the chart it will cause eye injury up to about 150 feet away and flash blindness up to one mile. After discovering that, UV sourrces tend to make me nervous.)

 

[brotato]

While I have no clue about the refraction index of spider silk, which is likely to vary significantly between species, you should be wary of using a black light in the spider's vicinity. Some, or many black light sources are unfiltered. In essence, it may produce a powerful blast of UVC. This can be, roughly, a slower version equivalent to passing your hand through the flame of a propane torch to the retina of animals, and particularly salticids with acute optical ability. A quick glance over the webs would be reasonably safe but leaving a UVC source on for an extended period of time is a very bad idea.
AND... the crappy cheaply made UV lights, as the green pointer I have, leak a highly dangerous amount of the IR spectrum. Just shining the light on a wall causes instant eye irritation.
And and, don't trust the source or sales pitch. Chances are nearly all UV lights on the market come from a handful of factories in China where regulation and public safety does not exist in their vocabulary.

(My laser pointer, identical to those all over the market, irritated my eyes. So I cobbed together the test bed to measure the output. Common safe pointers have a 5 MW output. This thing is up around 250 MW going by how fast it drains the battery. And it does not have the IR filter. An extra expense in manufacturing. Checking the chart it will cause eye injury up to about 150 feet away and flash blindness up to one mile. After discovering that, UV sourrces tend to make me nervous.)

okay thanks i will