G. rosea mating (or lack of)

[kosh]

G. rosea mating/courting (or lack of)

Well, i put my mature male rosehair and my female (95% sure its a female and all replies to my sexing thread agreed) right next to each other in ther respective kritter keepers to see if they noticed each other...
they didnt seem to notice.....so i let the male out and he was crawling around on top of the female's enclosure looking for a way to get down and escape.....he didnt seem interested in her at all......once he got close enough to the female while he was on top of the cage, the female got right up against the top underneath him and when he moved she followed him....she followed him all over until i put him back in his cage........he still seemed oblivious to the fact she was right under him......do males get too old to breed once they are mature??
i havent seen him show any interest in her or make any sperm webs or anything...........
im scared to let them actually come into direct contact because im not really sure what either one would do.......
she is prone to jump at anything that moves inside her cage (i feed her alot) and he is a deadbutt.....he hardly ever does anything except lay around....and lately over the last couple of months i believe his abdomen has shrunk...he still wont eat any food (tried crickets and superworms).......

anyway....i know i am 100% amateur at T mating but it would be cool since i have a male and a female.....even if she didnt produce a sack, the experience would be enough for me!!!
what are some of your opinions??
should i leave mating to more experienced people or am i just getting nervous cause im still a T sex virgin and i should open the cages and let them at each other!?!?:? :?

 

[Advocatus]

He has never made a sperm web? Let him make a sperm web before you try to mate them.

 

[Chris]

Try swapping spider cages (put the male in the females cage and vise-versa)... maybe if he gets a whiff of her scent on the substrate it will prompt him to get to work

 

[kosh]

yes i am pretty sure he HAS made more than one sperm web since his ultimate moult (06/02) .....although i have never actually witnessed him making a sperm web i think i saw the immediate aftermath of the web once......i was wondering if maybe males get too "old" to mate.....it has been almost 8 months since his ultimate moult.....
i guess i could try putting them in each others cages and see if it makes a difference.......thats a good idea i hadn't thought of...

 

[Tangled WWWeb]

IME, alot of male T's eventually lose interest in mating. My wife has a mature male G. rosea that has been mature for over a year now. We named him " the love machine" because he was paired with so many females. Each time that he was mated within the first several months, he performed seemingly with gusto. However, the last few times that he has been tried, he wanted nothing to do with the female. He still eats and is fairly active, but has not constructed any recent sperm webs. I have read that geriatric males will still go through the motions. Obviously he hasn't been reading the same books that I have.

In other instances ( Joy can attest to this) newly matured males that have constructed at least one sperm web, appear to want nothing to do with an apparently willing female. I have had males that were too spooked one day, that were willing participants the next. His age may or may not be a factor.

I would keep trying. There may still be life left in the old boy.


John

 

[kosh]

i just swapped the two spiders out in their kritter keepers and the male wandered around in her keeper for a while and is just sitting there now............any idea how long should be good enough to leave him in there before he could have gotten a good scent
she was a terror to get out and into his cage.....she bit my chopsticks and bit her hide when i tried to remove it...mean she is, yes!