Exciting morning....

[mmfh]

I came home today and looked into my woodlouse spider jar, where I figured a long dead spider was hiding (havent seen it in ages). To my great surprise there it was in a web against the side of the jar, alive lol. I went to feed it and got another great surprise......babies!!!!! I have had this spider for at least three months, plus about a month ago I had to transfer the spider into another clean container due to a massive population wave of grain mites. The fact that she was gravid and then had her babies in the new container is imo fabulous! I love these spiders! They look to be about 1/16 of an inch and fully mobile. So far I have separated out 5 and I can see 2-3 more down in the moms tunnels. I feel like a kid at christmas. Now I need to go out and get some fruit flies and some more containers. I hope I do okay because I have never raised baby spiders from such a tiny size. Any advice would be welcome, thank you.

 

[Alltheworld601]

well i just looked up the woodlouse spider, and the very first thing that it said was that they "prey exclusively on woodlice." I'm no expert, but rather than fruit flies, perhaps you should be looking for woodlice?

 

[mmfh]

They do specialize in eating woodlice but are adaptable and mine has readily been eating crickets. I ended up getting mini mealworms because they had no fff and mealworms burrow, similar to woodlice. I am going to pre kill the mealworms for the babies and see if they take them.

 

[Curious jay]

Hi I keep a small community of these (1MM, 3 MF and a juvie) they breed like rabbits and are extremely hardy I usually feed mine with a few isopods out of my cultures and chuck a few mealworms in for them to dig up along with crickets when the young hatch out and start showing above surface level I drop in 3-4 heavily gravid isopods (2-3 usually get eaten before birthing lol) and the young thrive well on the baby isopods if you don't have any pre kill crickets they'll happily scavenge.

I really need to swap their container as it resembles the graveyard scenes of lion king just replaced with isopod carcasses haha but they tend to feed less often on crickets I'm guessing as they contain more nutrients and a lot less chitin.

The females are also incredibly docile to the males which surprised me as they aren't at all docile towards any kind of disturbance haha I've has this colony going since Feb and the male is still going strong the females have produced 6 or so eggsacks that I could see maybe more that I couldn't. But yea great spiders remind me of myglamorphs with the shiny plastic like looks hope some of this helped!

 

[mmfh]

Ty very much! I agree they are very attractive spiders and watching them take down larger sized crickets is cool. Your description of your container really made me laugh! They are rather skittish lol and those babies were tiny and FAST! I was hesitant to dig the container up to get the rest of the babies (the ones I caught were all on or near the surface) so I will just wait till they come up. Mom doesn't seem to be in eating mode, not sure if inverts have a chemical shut off switch like mammals to prevent them from eating their young but I will put some mealworms in so whoever is hungry can eat. I am planning on getting a batch of isopods, started looking yesterday, i'm just not sure what kind to get (dwarf or regular). Generally how long do they live, how fast do the slings grow?

 

[Ciphor]

Hi I keep a small community of these (1MM, 3 MF and a juvie) they breed like rabbits and are extremely hardy I usually feed mine with a few isopods out of my cultures and chuck a few mealworms in for them to dig up along with crickets when the young hatch out and start showing above surface level I drop in 3-4 heavily gravid isopods (2-3 usually get eaten before birthing lol) and the young thrive well on the baby isopods if you don't have any pre kill crickets they'll happily scavenge.

I really need to swap their container as it resembles the graveyard scenes of lion king just replaced with isopod carcasses haha but they tend to feed less often on crickets I'm guessing as they contain more nutrients and a lot less chitin.

The females are also incredibly docile to the males which surprised me as they aren't at all docile towards any kind of disturbance haha I've has this colony going since Feb and the male is still going strong the females have produced 6 or so eggsacks that I could see maybe more that I couldn't. But yea great spiders remind me of myglamorphs with the shiny plastic like looks hope some of this helped!

Really cool colony with these. Use a larger enclosure (10 gallon) and put a couple large long pieces of wood over the substrate. Put in your woodlouse hunters (preferably 5+ with at least 2 males, rest female) and a colony of same species Isopods (preferably Armadillidium) Give it about 2 weeks for the woodlice to get situated, and the spiders. Use some sticks to make an area for some cobweb spiders (preferably Steatoda spp.) that is not directly over the wood you laid down, but off to the side of it. I was easily able to get two Steatoda grossa to share a relatively small area. As long as food supply is strong, Steatoda spp. are very ok with being in close proximity to one another. Even if they are not from the same eggsac. It is important your starter isopod colony is around 40.

Makes for a really cool self sustaining colony. Woodlice get kept in check by 2 predatory species, but keep a high enough population to do their job and compost. You can toss some silverfish in for show.

Only maintenance required is the , and tossing in some plants to decay, for the woodlice to break down. You gotta keep an eye on the cobwebber, and break down parts that start to over reach. Eventually it will stop trying to expand and become content with its smaller web space.

 

[mmfh]

Three days ago I threw 5 mini mealworms into my adult woodlouse spider's enclosure. Wow! She is going through them like a plow through dirt. So far she has eaten one a day and is nice and plump again after her fast (to reproduce). The neat thing is she will eat them outside of her tunnels so I get to see her. Today she had one in her fangs, ate for a bit then stopped and cleaned her legs. She stood overtop of the mealworm the whole time. She walked around a bit then picked it back up and continued to eat. It was very fun to watch. So far the slings seem to be doing okay, but I wish they looked more plump. Just to mix things up i'm going to get some small crickets to feed them this week.
Ciphor: sounds like a really neat setup, may try it.