Busy Week!

EAD063

Arachnoprince
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Vaejovis spinigerus brood...

Mom with old molts still on her back.


Slings



B jacksoni molt to I4



Tityus serrulatus arrival/molt

 
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Thaedion

Arachnoangel
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Wow I would say that is a busy week! So is it one sling per cup? 37 slings? All from her? :eek:

Someone needs a vacation :p
 
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EAD063

Arachnoprince
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Exactly ... 37 cups and I left one with mom just to see how she treats it. So 38 in total, didn't find any dead and I don't expect any to perish now as they are extremely active. They fully flourece now and I will be feeding them for the first time tomorrow. I belive they were born sometime early last week and I found them late Thursday night.
 

Mark Newton

Arachnobaron
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Well done Ed, you're gonna be busy, taking all those lids on and off. I drill a hole into the lid (cricket size) and place a piece of wide sticky tape over the hole. Just peel the tape back and introduce the cricket, place tape back. Less disturbance to the scorpion. Looks nice an humid inside those containers.
 

EAD063

Arachnoprince
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Yes, it is fairly humid, the heat lamps do that as opposed to a warm constant air temperature in the house, too small :(. But it is good in a way because I do not need to water them and simply taking off the cap and wiping it every now and again removes water from the sand/cup but also leaves it moist enough to aid growth & development.
 
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JungleGuts

Arachnoprince
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hopefully a few of these little guys will be mine soon:) A few questions:

Are you using sand?

What sould be used as a hide?

Do they climb or stay on the ground?

What temp/humidity are you keeping them at?
 

EAD063

Arachnoprince
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hopefully a few of these little guys will be mine soon:) A few questions:

Are you using sand?

What sould be used as a hide?

Do they climb or stay on the ground?

What temp/humidity are you keeping them at?
I use a peat and play sand mix. About 2:1. For hides, I use clay pots which are broken (somewhat* stratigically{D ) and round the sharp edges with sand paper, the pots are .69 cents at home depot. Because they are still slings, and in deli-cups, I have bark/bark strips as shelters because it was more economical at the moment. They are not aboreal, and as adults dig many chambered scrapes under rocks and hides, they are an active species, digging in the dark all day and wandering all night. I am not monitoring the slings requirements as of now because it is not practical but I keep the adults/my other I3 and I4 vaejovis at 76-80 and 20-30% humidity. The slings have some condensation in they're cup but they are not swimming in moisture, which wouldn't be good for this species.
 
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EAD063

Arachnoprince
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Moms first feeding since seperation

One sling in there too, hopefully she shares.

 

JSN

Arachnodemon
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Ed,

your doing a great job with those V. spinigerus, congrats on the kids...nice jacksoni and tityus too...
 

EAD063

Arachnoprince
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Thanks Jason, hardy gal you gave me, the tityus and babycurus are cool but the spinigerus is by far the most active. I love how streamlined the babycurus look.
 

xVOWx

Arachnoknight
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How small are your V spinigerus slings? Are they able to take take live prey yet? Right now I have 5 I2 L mucronatus that are too small for even pinheads so I give em prekilled small cricks, it's amusing to watch a sling sting a crick that's already dead ;).
 

EAD063

Arachnoprince
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How small are your V spinigerus slings? Are they able to take take live prey yet? Right now I have 5 I2 L mucronatus that are too small for even pinheads so I give em prekilled small cricks, it's amusing to watch a sling sting a crick that's already dead ;).
They are pretty small. They could probaly eat few day old crickets but I am feeding them fresh killed prey.
 

xVOWx

Arachnoknight
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Yeah, it's hard to find crickets small enouph to feed slings of small species without ordering some, and even if you did they would only be small enouph for a few feedings.
 

EAD063

Arachnoprince
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Very good point.

I'm just hoping they are eating. I'm cutting crickets in half and oepning they're guts a little bit. The slings look a tad plumper but it's hard to tell. They'd be stupid not to eat with fresy bleeding prey in front of them... I didn't see the mom offer the one sling I left in there food, but it's still alive so it must be doing well somehow.
 

xVOWx

Arachnoknight
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I just crush the heads and drop it in the vial, I ussually check in on them in an hour or so and most of the time they are munching on it, a few times one or two will even be dragging it around.
 

EAD063

Arachnoprince
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I just crush the heads and drop it in the vial, I ussually check in on them in an hour or so and most of the time they are munching on it, a few times one or two will even be dragging it around.
My I4's do that, they piggy back it to their burrow. They are getting stronger though, one took a cricket double it's size out in one punch the other morning, didn't even waste his time on any more attempts.
 

Rigelus

Arachnoknight
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Yeah, it's hard to find crickets small enouph to feed slings of small species without ordering some, and even if you did they would only be small enouph for a few feedings.
Alternatively you could breed your own crickets......

I know most people think it's a bit of a mess/to much work/can't get it to work .. but if you have access to adult crickets and you only need micros's for food then it's really quite simple and easy.

All you need is a container to house the adults, a heat source, a few containers with lids for the cricket eggs and a few more containers to house the micro's.

I use an old terrarium with a 3 inch layer of dried wood chippings as substrate. Buried in the substrate is a sweet container (picked up free from local shop) so that the top is flush with the substrate. I've drilled loads of 8 mm holes in the sweet container lid, filled the sweet container up with moist cocopeat so that when i press the lid down theres is no air between the bottom of the lid and the cocopeat. In fact it's good if the cocopeat pokes up a little through the holes.



The heat source (i use a 25 watt halogen) is placed above the sweet container and egg cases or screwed up newspaper for the adults to hide in are placed at the other end of the adult housing container.
I usually lightly spray the sweet container (where the females wil lay their eggs) once a day. This keeps the cocopeat damp plus gives the adults chance to get something to drink.

I'll leave the sweet container in with the adults for a week then take it out and replace it with another sweet container that i've allready prepared with damp cocopeat.
Instead of drilling holes in all the lids of my sweet containers i just drill one lid at a time and then use this lid on whichever sweet container is in with the adults.
The sweet containers and lids i use are plastic which means that the adults crickets will usually be able to chew around the holes i've drilled in the lids and make them bigger. Both males and females do this to get to the eggs so that they can eat them! One lid usually last me approx a month.
You could of course use metal containers or metal reinforced lids but it's just that i have access to an almost endless supply of plastic sweet containers from my local shop that i don't really need to hunt around for anything else.

Anyway.......

The sweet container that i've removed from the adults then goes into another high sided plastic container which i then place in my boiler room (you can use any warm place just as long as the temperature remains reasonably constant).
I usually notice the micro's coming out within a few days.



A group of 50 sub adult/adult crickets will keep me in micro's for approx 1½ months...;)
 

Mark Newton

Arachnobaron
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For my cricket egg laying box I do a similar thing. I place one sweet container inside another. The top one has small holes in the base. I add water to the bottom one down the sides. The top one draws water from the bottom one via capillary action - through the holes. This way the soil in the top sweet container has moisture all the way through and doesnt dry out as fast...

Your setup and pics are very good...some good ideas there.....:clap:
 

Rigelus

Arachnoknight
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Yes thats a good idea with the capillary action although i find that if i swap the containers out within a week of each other i don't really have any problems with the substrate drying out. The pure cocopeat seems to keep the moisture very well. It's only the surface that dries out. After a week it's still damp 5mm down. Not just that the adult crickets seem to enjoy drinking droplets of water of the lid when i spray..;)

Still if you should use another substrate that didn't hold moisture so well or if you wished to let the egg collecting container sit longer in with the adults (not to though or you'll have micro's mixed with your adults!) then i should think capillary would be the way to go.
 

EAD063

Arachnoprince
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Hey Rig,

So it only takes the eggs a few days to hatch? I wish I knew that before. :(

I can only imagine the smell, as I bought adult crickets for the first time ever the other day, and very quickly the bag had excrement EVERYWHERE. If I smoke a cigarette in my house it smells for a darn week, I don't know if I wan't to trust these crickets lol. But thanks for the info, do you think if I did that whole setup that I could get away only maintaining it every other day? I've heard crickets need a lot of maintenence, but if I breed them it would have to be at my parents house... my house doesn't have enough room, stupid condominuims.
 
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