First time buying slings!

Adan

Arachnopeon
Joined
Aug 29, 2016
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I have owned a two Ts in the past but had to get rid of them for one reason or another. I have finanlly convinced my wife to allow me to get some Ts for our exotic animal room and she agreed to one and with this ticket of approval I got 9 slings, all different of course haha..... Now I have never personally cared for a sling and I have done a lot of reading about them and I feel pretty confident in keeping them. Room temp averages between 78-84, I keep the humidity stable, I have a colony of dubia roaches so I will forever have food for them and all animals in my collection. I guess my only question is how long, after receiving the slings in the mail, should I feed them, I will be power feeding but only to quickly get the slings out of this delicate state that they are in, how often do those of you who power feed slings feed? Finally in general how hard do you find it to keep slings?

my current collection includes
Brazilian white knee tarantula 1/4" Acanthoscurria geniculata
Costa Rican stripe-knee tarantula 1/4" Aphonopelma seemanni
Mexican red knee tarantula 1/2" Brachypelma smithi
Mexican Orange Beuty 3/4"-1" Brachypelma baumgarteni
Guatemalan tiger rump tarantula 3/4" Cyclosternum pentalore
Chaco goldstripe tarantula 1" Grammostola pulchripes
Colombian pumpkin patch tarantula 1/8" Hapalopus spp.

1.1 GBB Chromatopelma cyaneopubescens male is IM female is MF
 

Nephrite

Arachnoknight
Joined
Mar 1, 2016
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151
Congrats on the pickups, and props to your wife for the permission! For slings feed them once every 1-3 days. You cannot overfeed a sling and will stop eating when it knows it's full or near premolt. For the 1/4" slings just give them half of a cricket/leg. Personally first time I took care of slings I was always worried, it was too dry or too humid, but just have good ventilation and drop a few water droplets every day. Where are you keeping these slings; plastic dram vials, deli cups, or other? Just have 3/4 of a container filled with substrate and that's it. (Only for the 1/4" slings, since enclosures for them are usually still very small for a water dish to fit in it.) That's all you need because most will burrow. Also when feeding prekilled food, don't give too much for less amounts of leftovers, since most of them will make a burrow and drag their food underground, making it impossible to take out the remains, to prevent mold. (My thread talking about that) http://arachnoboards.com/threads/urgent-mold-situation.285980/ Yup, I think that's pretty much it!
 

antinous

Pamphopharaoh
Old Timer
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Mar 28, 2013
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Nice collection! First off, I dislike the term power-feeding. It means something different to everyone, similar to what you said. For me, I feed my small slings every day until they refuse, then wait two days and repeat. I feed them right after I get them as I'd like them to get some liquids/energy fast.
 

Adan

Arachnopeon
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Aug 29, 2016
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I was able to get some Pill containers from the local Walgreens for free, the G. pulchripes is in a large vial and the B. baumgarteni is in a deli cup and that will do for now until I get a bit more money and their growth slows down I will move them to one of the fancy enclosures that I see people selling on here or other T websites. Instead of cricket legs could I cut a baby dubia in half and feed to the 1/4" slings?
 

antinous

Pamphopharaoh
Old Timer
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I was able to get some Pill containers from the local Walgreens for free, the G. pulchripes is in a large vial and the B. baumgarteni is in a deli cup and that will do for now until I get a bit more money and their growth slows down I will move them to one of the fancy enclosures that I see people selling on here or other T websites. Instead of cricket legs could I cut a baby dubia in half and feed to the 1/4" slings?
Here's what I do, once they reach 1/2" I put them all in 16 oz delicups. This is so I don't have to constantly rehouse them and it's easier on me and on my Ts.

And yes you can do that, just make sure to take it out after a day so it doesn't start molding.
 

Nephrite

Arachnoknight
Joined
Mar 1, 2016
Messages
151
I was able to get some Pill containers from the local Walgreens for free, the G. pulchripes is in a large vial and the B. baumgarteni is in a deli cup and that will do for now until I get a bit more money and their growth slows down I will move them to one of the fancy enclosures that I see people selling on here or other T websites. Instead of cricket legs could I cut a baby dubia in half and feed to the 1/4" slings?
Yep!
 

Adan

Arachnopeon
Joined
Aug 29, 2016
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0
Nice collection! First off, I dislike the term power-feeding. It means something different to everyone, similar to what you said. For me, I feed my small slings every day until they refuse, then wait two days and repeat. I feed them right after I get them as I'd like them to get some liquids/energy fast.
Sorry for the term power-feeding, being a snake breeder it was the only thing I could compare it to haha
 

antinous

Pamphopharaoh
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Sorry for the term power-feeding, being a snake feeder it was the only thing I could compare it to haha
It's fine haha. For me, power-feeding would be giving it food every time it finished a meal, as in the wild, they are opportunistic eaters and will eat whenever they get a chance.
 

Adan

Arachnopeon
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Well, thank you for the replies and advice, once I get home I will have to start a new thread and post pictures of everyone!
 

antinous

Pamphopharaoh
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Well, thank you for the replies and advice, once I get home I will have to start a new thread and post pictures of everyone!
Looking forward to it! Remember to ask questions if you need any help!
 

Jones0911

Arachnobaron
Joined
Mar 5, 2013
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406
When I get Ts that are slings I feed them as much as they'll eat every day per week.

My Pamphobeteus (3) eat about 2-3 dubia a day so in a week ( they do skip days sometimes) I'll say each eat about maybe 6-8 give or take because I don't keep track.

IMO keeping slings is easy to a degree, newbies usually have deaths with the avics mostly.

Sometimes slings die for no reason reason other times they die from falls, too wet/too dry substrate etc...

As,long as directions are followed slings aren't too hard to care for also you learn through experience
 

Adan

Arachnopeon
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On a side note I got the Female and Male GBB as a trade for a Adult Female Bearded dragon that I got at no cost because I rescued her... Being new to the hobby is this a good deal, I have no clue what the price on adult GBB are.
 

viper69

ArachnoGod
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Dec 8, 2006
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On a side note I got the Female and Male GBB as a trade for a Adult Female Bearded dragon that I got at no cost because I rescued her... Being new to the hobby is this a good deal, I have no clue what the price on adult GBB are.
Depends on the type of bearded dragon.
 

Jones0911

Arachnobaron
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Mar 5, 2013
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406
On a side note I got the Female and Male GBB as a trade for a Adult Female Bearded dragon that I got at no cost because I rescued her... Being new to the hobby is this a good deal, I have no clue what the price on adult GBB are.

Well if you got the dragon at no cost and wasn't bothered by parting with it then it was a great deal....

However for you to really make something out of that deal you'll need to mate the Ts and hopefully get an eggsac or two out of them before the male dies.

If the male is too old too mate and will die soon, that was a bad deal unless you wasn't planning on mating them anyway.
 

Adan

Arachnopeon
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Well if you got the dragon at no cost and wasn't bothered by parting with it then it was a great deal....

However for you to really make something out of that deal you'll need to mate the Ts and hopefully get an eggsac or two out of them before the male dies.

If the male is too old too mate and will die soon, that was a bad deal unless you wasn't planning on mating them anyway.
The male is too young to mate, he was hatched last February
 

Jones0911

Arachnobaron
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Mar 5, 2013
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Oh ok cool then I'd say that's a great deal.

if I was in your shoes I'd research breeding now (reading breeding reports specific to your T species) so by the time your male is ready to breed you'll feel confident in the experience.

Also asking questions along the way from experienced breeders on here like @Poec54 and @cold blood and others
 

antinous

Pamphopharaoh
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The male is too young to mate, he was hatched last February
If you're not up for breeding yourself, you can always send the male off on a breeding loan with experienced breeders and maybe do a 50/50. I'd probably do that since right now I don't have the space or time to deal with slings currently.
 

Adan

Arachnopeon
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My only problem with breeding is I wouldn't know what to do with all the slings, even if I did split 50/50 I would still feel like I had to many haha
 

cold blood

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It's fine haha. For me, power-feeding would be giving it food every time it finished a meal, as in the wild, they are opportunistic eaters and will eat whenever they get a chance.
Here's my take on "power feeding" slings, but first I will start with what I consider to be the definition of power feeding....power feeding is the inference that food is always available, 24/7, unlimited...even you guys feeding daily don't meet that criteria, it is, IMO, just a heavier feeding schedule. True power feeding is what we see and complain about in pet stores, with crickets constantly roaming the cages, no one "in the know" does this....I hate the term within this hobby, there's really no correlation with the reptile hobby, its a term that only serves to confuse (like "birdeater").

Ok.......so, back when I was starting to raise slings and up until I had more than just a bunch to dote on, I fed like a lot of you guys are talking about, kept my slings warm and I got great growth rates...and I thought there was a direct correlation with the feeding schedule. Now that I have hundreds of slings, I feed once a week, I like to feed diced mealworms (and even a 1/3 of a mealworm is a pretty big sling meal), but small roaches and crickets are also used as well. Well here was the biggest surprise for me....my growth rates are essentially the same with my slower feeding schedule.

How could this be you say??? Well its simple, from molt 1 to molt 2, the t basically will require x amount of meals before it goes pre molt....and its new exo will also take x amount of days (which varies with temps) before the new exo is fully formed and the t is actually ready to molt. So lets say for the sake of easy numbers that a sling requires 10 meals to trigger pre-molt. I could feed those 10 meals over the course of 2 weeks or even a week...the t will be ready after those 10 meals, but the time required to grow a new exo is still basically the same, and is IME, dictated more by temps unless food is deprived. And if this amount of time is (just a number) 60 days, the heavy feeding schedule will simply result in a longer pre-molt fasting period as the t awaits the new growth to be completed....sometimes with slings waiting a month or more, fasting.

Conversely, I could take the same t, feed it once every 5-7 days and have a t, that while fattening a little slower, will still be able to be ready to molt in the same exact time period.

The only difference a more moderately paced feeding schedule makes is that it almost eliminates (or drastically reduces) pre-molt fasting as the t fattens at a more equal time in relation to its ability (for its body) to become physically ready to molt.

Moral of the story, feed your t and keep them warm for fastest growth, but how fast you dump food into them won't have the dramatic effect many people hope for and expect.....a dramatically reduced feeding schedule is more effective in slowing growth than the opposite is at speeding it.
 
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