dried up eggsack questions

[widowkeeper]

ive had pretty good luck getting my mated females to drop sacks the problem is ive gotten 2 with no devolpment (pulled at 20 and 10 days had no problem keeping them from drying up )and 3 that i left till they were abondoned that dried up. the queston is how do you house your females and avoid dried up sacks. all my breeding females get 10 gallon tanks and temps of 75 to 83 night and day.i mist /dampen the cages twice weekly.i use 100% peat all 3 that dried up opted to use burried glass jars as hides for their sacks.im starting to wonder if i should just get a mecanical mom. any imput would be helpfull. i have 5 more moms that could possibly drop sacks soon 3 are looking quiet fat hoping not to lose them too soo what am i doing wrong

 

[Stan Schultz]

... the queston is how do you house your females and avoid dried up sacks. ...

Tarantula eggs need a relative humidity of at least 60% (determined by Al McKee in the early 1980s) to keep from drying out completely, and they can easily tolerate Rhs up to pretty close to 100%. From your brief description I suspect that you kept them too dry.

You are using the "au naturel" approach to caring for the eggsac: allowing Momma to do all the work. That's okay as long as you make sure that she has a clean cage before she lays the eggs (this reduces the possibility of a mite attack), and then you dampen the entire substrate and block ventilation after she produces an eggsac and until the babies emerge from it (raising the humidity and maintaining it CONSTANTLY at optimal levels for the developing eggs). Misting is as worthless here as it is in most other cases because the resulting Rh isn't constant, and it only takes the eggs a few hours to die of dehydration.

At that point you need to transfer the babies into another container where you can continue to maintain a very high humidity to keep them from dying of dehydration. And, Momma's cage should then at least be dried out again if not completely cleaned and set up anew, thus throttling any developing mite problems.

Best of luck. Breed your tarantulas!

 

[widowkeeper]

thank you i think my main problem was to much venilation = little to no humidity stupid mistake. i think ill throw togather a mecanical mom and go that route with the less common harder to get sacks anyone got any links to a good write up for making a good one thats been tested and proven to work?

 

[Stan Schultz]

thank you i think my main problem was to much venilation = little to no humidity stupid mistake. i think ill throw togather a mecanical mom and go that route with the less common harder to get sacks anyone got any links to a good write up for making a good one thats been tested and proven to work?

1. We wrote one up and it was published by the ATS for many years. I know they work for a fact. I even donated one to the ATS Conference raffle this year. Maybe someone still has a copy of the booklet they'd agree to loaning you?

2. Visit http://atshq.org/forum/showthread.php?t=6174 for another version. It looks good and the builder says it works well.

Best of luck. Breed your tarantulas!

 

[widowkeeper]

wouldnt that turn constantly? i would think you would need to add a timer to the timer lol it was my under standing that sacks needed to be rotated a few times a day not constantly or is that not gonna matter ? while on the subject of turning dont some species suspend and tie down their sacks and not turn them? and my last question how much venilation would you want to give wouldnt sealing it completely just cause probs after a couple weeks?

 

[Stan Schultz]

wouldnt that turn constantly? i would think you would need to add a timer to the timer lol it was my under standing that sacks needed to be rotated a few times a day not constantly or is that not gonna matter ? ...

Yup! It turns constantly until the timer gives up the ghost. I've heard at least one criticism of the timers now available on the market: They're apparently made in China and the quality is poor. The motors or bearings die rather quickly. If you build your own Mechanical Mom, make it so it's really easy to trade out the timer for a new one.

... while on the subject of turning dont some species suspend and tie down their sacks and not turn them? ...

Yup, again. I've not bred any of these, but it would seem that for these, the best method is "au naturel." Dampen the substrate if it isn't already damp and let Momma do the work for you.

... and my last question how much venilation would you want to give wouldnt sealing it completely just cause probs after a couple weeks?...

Apparently not. The high humidity is much more important. Remember that the arboreal tarantulas may be the only ones that are accustomed to a lot of ventilation. The burrowing varieties live most of their lives in a dark, rather claustrophobic (by my reckoning), probably rather poorly ventilated burrow.

Enjoy your little hole-in-the-ground buddies!