gizmosdeath
Arachnopeon
- Joined
- Mar 18, 2013
- Messages
- 20
C. Cyaneopubescens
This was my first attempt at breeding Greenbottle blues.
So, I started off by reading everything that I could on here and paying attention to what worked and what didn't. After introducing the male on several occasions only to have him chased off by my female every time, I had to figure out what I was doing wrong. I finally got it. I was keeping it too dry in her enclosure so I made adjustments as fallows:
Temp was kept at a constant 80 degrees with minor fluctuations up and down. Humidity was always monitored and kept constant at 70% and after a week of letting the temp and humidity stabilize the male was introduced into the females enclosure sometime around the beginning of July. I put 2 large zip lock bags on top of the females screen lid with a 2 or 3 inch gap between them to get the humidity up and keep it stable. The male was constantly drumming and moving closer to the females den. This time she started tapping as well and was very receptive. After 20 minutes of watching them hold hands and seeing possible inserts she finally chased him off. I wasn't able to get a very good view at the angle that they were mating so I didn't actually see solid inserts. After she chased him off he was pulled from the tank and allowed to eat and make sperm webs. He was a pretty old male too so I wasn't holding my breath for a fertile sack. After letting them play this game a couple times I decided that I would let him stay in overnight. I woke up the fallowing morning to find that she had finally caught him. He was pretty much fully intact so she must have just killed him which meant that they must have had most of the night to do their thing. After eating him I didn’t try feeding her for a couple weeks.
After the male was gone I kept the females enclosure at the same temp and humidity as stated above for the next couple of months. After a couple of months I noticed her abdomen getting bigger and she stopped taking food. I was feeding her adult discoid roaches every two and a half to three weeks.
She moved from her webbed den in the corner of the tank to the middle of the tank, closer to the water dish, and started webbing a bowl shaped pad. She then tore that down and moved on the other side of the water dish and made a new webbed "bowl." The most interesting part was that she used coco fiber to make a bridge into the water dish that acted like a siphon to soak the substrate underneath her webbing. I'm assuming that she did this to raise the humidity. The next morning, on September 10th, I woke up to find her wrapping up the rest of her new egg sack.
After 13 days, on September 23rd, I decided I couldn’t wait any longer and pulled the sack. After putting the eggs into the incubator and pulling the few black ones that were present I was able to get a rough count of 220 + eggs. After three days of being in the incubator with the temp set at 80 and the humidity at 90% the eggs hatched into EWLs. Out of all the eggs I think 20 or so eggs didn’t hatch. Instead of pulling the un-hatched eggs though I left them in with the 1st instars just to see if some of them might still hatch. I could tell that some of them were unfertilized due to appearing clear. I noticed after a couple of days that most of the un-hatched eggs were becoming good meals for some of the slings so this may have been a good deterrent from eating each other. Unfortunately, I forgot to record the molt date for 1st instar. Cannibalism was not a huge problem but there were a few losses. However, on Oct. 28th the slings started molting into 2nd instars and after four days all slings had molted. To prevent losses I separated 2nd instars as soon as they were done molting into deli cups. Final count is 188 and ½ haha. The half is a sling that is still stuck in its molt and I have it in an ICU hoping it will pull through. Out of 189 slings one is having trouble with molting and one came out somewhat deformed as it’s missing 2 legs and has 2 more that are bent up really bad. All in all I would say it’s a pretty good outcome to a first attempt at breeding this beautiful spider.
This was my first attempt at breeding Greenbottle blues.
So, I started off by reading everything that I could on here and paying attention to what worked and what didn't. After introducing the male on several occasions only to have him chased off by my female every time, I had to figure out what I was doing wrong. I finally got it. I was keeping it too dry in her enclosure so I made adjustments as fallows:
Temp was kept at a constant 80 degrees with minor fluctuations up and down. Humidity was always monitored and kept constant at 70% and after a week of letting the temp and humidity stabilize the male was introduced into the females enclosure sometime around the beginning of July. I put 2 large zip lock bags on top of the females screen lid with a 2 or 3 inch gap between them to get the humidity up and keep it stable. The male was constantly drumming and moving closer to the females den. This time she started tapping as well and was very receptive. After 20 minutes of watching them hold hands and seeing possible inserts she finally chased him off. I wasn't able to get a very good view at the angle that they were mating so I didn't actually see solid inserts. After she chased him off he was pulled from the tank and allowed to eat and make sperm webs. He was a pretty old male too so I wasn't holding my breath for a fertile sack. After letting them play this game a couple times I decided that I would let him stay in overnight. I woke up the fallowing morning to find that she had finally caught him. He was pretty much fully intact so she must have just killed him which meant that they must have had most of the night to do their thing. After eating him I didn’t try feeding her for a couple weeks.
After the male was gone I kept the females enclosure at the same temp and humidity as stated above for the next couple of months. After a couple of months I noticed her abdomen getting bigger and she stopped taking food. I was feeding her adult discoid roaches every two and a half to three weeks.
She moved from her webbed den in the corner of the tank to the middle of the tank, closer to the water dish, and started webbing a bowl shaped pad. She then tore that down and moved on the other side of the water dish and made a new webbed "bowl." The most interesting part was that she used coco fiber to make a bridge into the water dish that acted like a siphon to soak the substrate underneath her webbing. I'm assuming that she did this to raise the humidity. The next morning, on September 10th, I woke up to find her wrapping up the rest of her new egg sack.
After 13 days, on September 23rd, I decided I couldn’t wait any longer and pulled the sack. After putting the eggs into the incubator and pulling the few black ones that were present I was able to get a rough count of 220 + eggs. After three days of being in the incubator with the temp set at 80 and the humidity at 90% the eggs hatched into EWLs. Out of all the eggs I think 20 or so eggs didn’t hatch. Instead of pulling the un-hatched eggs though I left them in with the 1st instars just to see if some of them might still hatch. I could tell that some of them were unfertilized due to appearing clear. I noticed after a couple of days that most of the un-hatched eggs were becoming good meals for some of the slings so this may have been a good deterrent from eating each other. Unfortunately, I forgot to record the molt date for 1st instar. Cannibalism was not a huge problem but there were a few losses. However, on Oct. 28th the slings started molting into 2nd instars and after four days all slings had molted. To prevent losses I separated 2nd instars as soon as they were done molting into deli cups. Final count is 188 and ½ haha. The half is a sling that is still stuck in its molt and I have it in an ICU hoping it will pull through. Out of 189 slings one is having trouble with molting and one came out somewhat deformed as it’s missing 2 legs and has 2 more that are bent up really bad. All in all I would say it’s a pretty good outcome to a first attempt at breeding this beautiful spider.