Egg sac/spiderling questions

[mschemmy]

I have several egg sacs I will be pulling soon. This will be the largest number of spiderlings I will have at one time. I am looking for some advice on feeding and substrate.

Feeding - does anyone have suggestions for the easiest and quickest way to feed a large number of spiderlings? I currently cut up pieces of mealworms but this is a very time consuming process and the leftovers can get nasty pretty quickly. Is is safe to use pinhead crickets if I am leaving them in the container without confirming the sling ate it? I would assume they can injure or kill a sling just like a full size cricket can with a larger tarantula. Waiting to make sure the sling takes the cricket is just as time consuming as the mealworm pieces.

Substrate - looking for suggestions on the best substrate choice for spiderlings. What holds moisture the best but is soft enough for the slings to dig and burrow? Coco fiber alone seems to dry out pretty quickly and top soil seems to harden up over time. I usually do a mixture of peat moss, coco fiber and top soil for my larger tarantulas. Is that the best choice for slings as well?

Thanks for any suggestions!

 

[fcat]

I found helpful methods by searching the forum. Dig deeper. You could probably filter out a lot of results by searching for results by cold blood. It will still be pages because he has been gracious enough to repeat himself over the years

You will find what works and what doesn’t by trial and error.

Unattended crickets arent wise for any size, why would slings be an exception?

 

[Ratmosphere]

Feeding: You can always crush the heads of the pinheads, but it's hard, tedious, and time consuming because of their small size. Caring for slings that you've bred is a ton of work and time consuming, but worth it. Be ready for a big responsibility if you don't want to sell them right away. Depending on where you are, there may be vendors willing to pick them up for a decent price if you didn't want to ship. Network on social media or at local expos and see who you can find.

Substrate: Depending on what you put the slings in, the substrate won't always dry out so easily. If you were to use coco, pre-mix it with water in a big container before hand. Then take your vials, or whatever else you are housing the slings in, and put the mixed substrate in them. Make sure when you squeeze a clump of it that water doesn't drip out. There are different sized dram vials for cheap on the web that a lot of vendors use for storing a large amount of slings. If you are strapped for cash, go to 5 Guys and get those ketchup sized deli cups. They are easy to poke holes in with a safety pin and free. Every time I go I take 30 or so, the workers don't care.

 

[l4nsky]

If you intend on breeding, my recommendation for the long term is to setup a lateralis colony. If you keep them bare bottom, then you can harvest the ootheca and set them up to incubate separately so you always have pinhead roaches available.

When I pull an eggsack around day 32, I will also setup a new ootheca hatchery. They can take around 40 days to hatch in the upper 70's, so the lats will start hatching just before or right around the time the 2i get separated and are ready to eat. Depending on the tarantula species being bred, the nymphs in the hatchery might grow at the same rate as the slings, meaning you'll always have appropriate sized prey items already separated out from the main colony, saving you precious time.

As long as the nymph is the same body length as the sling and the sling isn't looking to be near a molt, there shouldn't be any issues leaving the nymph in the enclosure. When the slings start getting plump or it's sackmates have started to molt, thats when you want to prekill the nymphs. It takes a bit of practice to be able to squish their heads in the feeding bowl with the blunt end of a bamboo skewer, but the slings will readily accept them and it takes much, much longer for the remains to get "nasty" when compared to cutup mealworms (cutting them up exposes and spreads all the gut microfauna, which decreases colonization time, which in turns speeds up decay and contamination growth).

As far as substrate goes, I just use the same mix I use for most of my animals (by volume, 2 parts Reptisoil, 2 parts loose coco coir, 1 part orchid moss, 1 part vermiculite). Once the slings are shipped off and I'm breaking down their enclosures, the substrate just gets put back into my tote. If the slings were captive born and bred in my facility, then there really isn't a biosecurity concern and everything can be reused with minimal cleaning.

 

[Andrew Clayton]

I have several egg sacs I will be pulling soon. This will be the largest number of spiderlings I will have at one time. I am looking for some advice on feeding and substrate.

Feeding - does anyone have suggestions for the easiest and quickest way to feed a large number of spiderlings? I currently cut up pieces of mealworms but this is a very time consuming process and the leftovers can get nasty pretty quickly. Is is safe to use pinhead crickets if I am leaving them in the container without confirming the sling ate it? I would assume they can injure or kill a sling just like a full size cricket can with a larger tarantula. Waiting to make sure the sling takes the cricket is just as time consuming as the mealworm pieces.

Substrate - looking for suggestions on the best substrate choice for spiderlings. What holds moisture the best but is soft enough for the slings to dig and burrow? Coco fiber alone seems to dry out pretty quickly and top soil seems to harden up over time. I usually do a mixture of peat moss, coco fiber and top soil for my larger tarantulas. Is that the best choice for slings as well?

Thanks for any suggestions!

I use maggots for feeding a load of slings, and just plain cocofibre as substrate, you can mix it up if you want though I can't see an issue.

 

[cold blood]

Feed slings diced mealworms, it's BY FAR your most efficient option....you can feed big meals, so you will need to feed them way less often and it's easy to tell if foods been eaten and to remove it.

As for substrate, what you use is irrelevant, they all work fine, use whatever you want or whatever you have available.

nom nom (Nhandu chromatus)

• cold blood
• Jun 8, 2018
• 1
• brazilian red and white tarantula chromatus feeding nhandu nhandu chromatus sling

Topsoil only hardens up if it's tamped down like other substrates, topsoil is very dense, so it should NEVER be tamped down.

 

[mschemmy]

Thank you everyone. Lots of great suggestions. Much appreciated!

 

[Andrew Clayton]

Feed slings diced mealworms, it's BY FAR your most efficient option

Bro Maggots, it's simple no chopping involved and get a bag of well over 1000 from fishing stores for pennies, uneaten maggots turn into fly's uneaten cut mealworm turns into mould and it's Definitely more efficient.

 

[cold blood]

Bro Maggots, it's simple no chopping involved and get a bag of well over 1000 from fishing stores for pennies, uneaten maggots turn into fly's uneaten cut mealworm turns into mould and it's Definitely more efficient.

Bro, maybe in your country, but maggots are NOT commercially available in the US.