- Joined
- Dec 12, 2005
- Messages
- 749
Hi all.
I use crickets as feeders for my tarantulas and they give me constant grief. This week's headache is that a couple of them appear to be decaying while alive or something. It's very strange. There are 2 affected so far, both are large ones. Their wings look dried, wrinkly and deformed, like peeling skin. One of them seems to be having problems with its legs as well, though the other is still running around okay.
They are kept in plastic faunarium tanks, with no substrate. I feed them dry oats and pieces of fruit, mainly apple, and they have a water dish. I use egg cartons and toilet rolls for hides. I've had this 'batch' of crix since last Monday, and only noticed this yesterday.
Any ideas what this could be? Obviously I'm not going to feed these particular crix to my Ts, but I've already fed them a number of crickets from this batch. I'm now freaking that they have some kind of infection that could hurt my spiders, although none of my Ts have shown any off signs yet. Anyone have any experience of seeing this or something similar?
I'd appreciate any advice. Here's a pic. You can see the wings are very deformed. I initially thought maybe the white stuff was some kind of fungus but I'm not sure any more, it looks more like more intensely affected layers of exoskeleton/wing. I know nothing about cricket physiology.
Thanks for looking.
EDIT: Okay, I've just been informed about 10 seconds after posting this that it's probably just a bad moult. Oh well, live and learn
. Sorry for wasting space guys
I use crickets as feeders for my tarantulas and they give me constant grief. This week's headache is that a couple of them appear to be decaying while alive or something. It's very strange. There are 2 affected so far, both are large ones. Their wings look dried, wrinkly and deformed, like peeling skin. One of them seems to be having problems with its legs as well, though the other is still running around okay.
They are kept in plastic faunarium tanks, with no substrate. I feed them dry oats and pieces of fruit, mainly apple, and they have a water dish. I use egg cartons and toilet rolls for hides. I've had this 'batch' of crix since last Monday, and only noticed this yesterday.
Any ideas what this could be? Obviously I'm not going to feed these particular crix to my Ts, but I've already fed them a number of crickets from this batch. I'm now freaking that they have some kind of infection that could hurt my spiders, although none of my Ts have shown any off signs yet. Anyone have any experience of seeing this or something similar?
I'd appreciate any advice. Here's a pic. You can see the wings are very deformed. I initially thought maybe the white stuff was some kind of fungus but I'm not sure any more, it looks more like more intensely affected layers of exoskeleton/wing. I know nothing about cricket physiology.
Thanks for looking.
EDIT: Okay, I've just been informed about 10 seconds after posting this that it's probably just a bad moult. Oh well, live and learn
. Sorry for wasting space guys
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