getting into the Calisoga longitarsus game again!

cacoseraph

ArachnoGod
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i am about to get a mature female C. longi' and i really really REALLY want to get this species established in the hobby this time around! (due to living situation a couple/few years back i had to get rid of virtually all my bugs, including the two (or three?) species of Calisoga i collected on an awesome bug trip)


i was wondering who else keeps them?


i am also looking for mature males for purchase, trade, or 50/50









(note: *techinically* this spider is known as Brachythele longitarsus... but that just plain doesn't make sense and a worker needs to fix it)
 
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cacoseraph

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it appears males can mature in about 2 years then, possibly a bit less. *i would guess that means a female could be mature in maybe 3-5 years, grown the same way. *which means about a 10-15 year life span, grown the same way

so i would guess they can do about 20 years in nature, if they are lucky

VERY rough extrapolations, of course :)

they do seem to be somewhat substantiated by other captive experiences... i.e. having mature females live 3+ years in captivity





man, that actually makes me pretty happy. if they grew *a bit faster i wold be a bit happier... but i am well pleased with that. *they grow quick enough that if we do things right we could have a good amount of breedable, beautiful mature females in 4-6 years. *that's not so very bad. *some of the dang local tarantulas roughly double all those time values i gave


oh man! * if everyone is very careful we might be able to selectively breed them to be faster growing! *it would be pretty easy... everyone who wants to play along at home would just need to track how fast their various slings mature... and we would just breed all the fastest maturing together. *then we can line breed the fastest maturing male from the first round of selective breeding back to his mom to hopefully lock in those fast growing genes. a bit more play like that and i bet we could get males that mature in 1.25 or 1.5 years by the third generation. *we might even be able to compress that down to a year by the fifth or sixth generation if we are lucky. *once we have fast growing spiders we can then breed for color or size and not have to wait 20 years to do 4 or 5 female generations.


of course, we would have to be careful to cull out any spiders who manifest goofiness or ugliness =P
 

bluefrogtat2

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i currently have 5 sub adults i have been raising for years.
getting ready to trade them out this week.
andy
 

Steven

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not keeping them, but as you might remember ;), would loooove to get some of those,... very nice looking spiders tmo :)

good luck in breeding them and getting them into the hobby
 

cacoseraph

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heh, hi Steven. good to see you :)



right on. i am hoping to drum up interest in these amazing spiders. i am really uncomfortable with how our hobby has pillaged out some bugs and i would like to take a bit of control in providing a species guaranteed to have been collected in a fairly conscientious manner and provide 100 reasonably priced captive produced spiders for every 1 WC on the market. obviously that is going to take at least ~5 years or so to have a hope of doing... but i think it is a worthwhile effort


this is a nice species to try it on, too, because there are probably millions over a fairly huge range in CA so we have a bit of leeway when it comes to establishing our breeding base and restocking the ol' genepool
 

proper_tea

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:clap::clap::clap:

I love these spiders. Unfortunately, my last longitarsus just passed. I still have a theventi that is thriving. I'll be looking forward to your breeding. Don't know if you know josh_r, but he as bred these before. I got my slings from him. They are super slow growers.
 

cacoseraph

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yeah, josh is who i collected my original spiders with. hell of a bugman.




well, it is very interesting... i have seen ppl say they grow really slow and fairly fast. that could be a range thing (we collected them over like 150-200 mile range) or a care conditions thing. will be fun to find out :D
 

Chris_Skeleton

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Well if you do breed them and want to ship a couple my way ;) I'll track how fast they grow.
 

mitchrobot

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good luck with your project, id love to see these and theveneti in the hobby some day. id be interested in checking out some slings, ive never seen any ever, always just MMs or big females. i currently only keep one. Al Wolf from the sonoma county reptile rescue has hands down the BIGGEST one of these i have ever seen, its is monstrous and must be old as the hills.

i just opened my girls sac and it was ALL rotten :barf:. this is year 3 that ive failed to get slings with this species. my girl molts almost the same time every year. captive breeding info isnt all too common, but i think i kept her cage too moist...

if you're ever near Navarro send me a PM, i know a road that is lousy with these :eek:. catching them in an entirely different thing than finding them though haha. i kid you not there is hundreds, but their burrows are deep and go almost straight down, i failed in flooding any out. theres also a 'reddish' colored type i found near the fort bragg area. looks like longitarsis but more of a rusty/silver color rather than the silver/silver color
 

mdkelty

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Calisoga Longitarsus is one of my favorites! I too would like to see them more established in the hobby. I have one immature female and two 3/4 inch slings and would like to get more. I'll be seeing John Apple today, (friend of mine). I'll ask him if he has any or where to get more.
 

John Apple

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I keep them...yes I do...I have two adult female longi's and two adult thevenetti's...and one that makes me go 'what the heck is that'
got a few sacs of each and I distributed them in the hobby...but that may have only been a few hundred of each...Andrew I am also looking for males so if ya got some send them to me and I'll pay postage...or you Cali folk that find them in a pool still alive....
these guys make a very cool hammock style sac that they guard very well
 

recluse

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I keep them...yes I do...I have two adult female longi's and two adult thevenetti's...and one that makes me go 'what the heck is that'
got a few sacs of each and I distributed them in the hobby...but that may have only been a few hundred of each...Andrew I am also looking for males so if ya got some send them to me and I'll pay postage...or you Cali folk that find them in a pool still alive....
these guys make a very cool hammock style sac that they guard very well

Hey John, Hans here, unfortunately the one you gave me died, would like to get more sometime.
 

mitchrobot

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John Apple, do you by chance have a pic of the one that makes you wonder? or where about it was from(south, central or north Ca)?

are these only found in california?

aside from the rust colored ones, in Albion Ca (near fort bragg) i found a MM of a very similar spider. couldnt for the life of me locate a burrow or anything similar to it. it had hooks and boxing gloves, but was about a third the size of a calisoga MM, black legs, reddish body. this thing wasnt bald and glossy, but fuzzy/metallic like calisoga.

im going to go....uh...see if i can liberate a few local girls this weekend from their burrows and into new homes...
i find the MMs at all times of the year, if i can manage to find one ill keep in touch. breeding projects ftw.
 

cacoseraph

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i pulled what seemed to be a brownish species that lived alongside the thevenetii in mariposa county, CA. lost track of them in my diaspora

there is at least one species of Calisoga (centrognatha or centroetha or something like that) that has been described that we don't know about. there is likely at least one species undescribed, too
 

Bill S

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As I type this I've got a pair of Calisoga longitarsus breeding. I got them both as tiny babies about two years ago, and both matured very recently. (Got them from John Apple, I think.) My question now is - anyone know how soon I'm likely to see an egg sac? Will it be produced during the winter (ignoring seasons due to captivity), or is the female likely to hold out until Spring? I light the room pretty much matching natural day length patterns, and the room runs in the high 60s during the winter, around 80 during the summer. What's the typical range in the number of babies produced?

Pretty cool spiders. I got them as freebies along with an order of tarantulas, hadn't really thought about keeping them or breeding them - but have grown to like them. Mine are pretty much pet holes, except that the holes were up against the side of the KK so I was always able to see them. Upon maturing, though, the male started hanging out on the surface. Probably wanting to go cruising for females.
 

proper_tea

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I approve of this game, but where does one get the playing pieces?
Huh?

I mean, I'm glad you resurrected this thread, because I really want an update on everyone's Calisoga projects.... but huh? What are you talking about?

Anyway, how's everyone's breeding project going? I really want to pick up some slings at some point. I miss my Calisogas. Hope you all are still working on making this possible.
 

Draiman

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Huh?

I mean, I'm glad you resurrected this thread, because I really want an update on everyone's Calisoga projects.... but huh? What are you talking about?
Notice the thread title says, "getting into the Calisoga longitarsus game again"?

Quite obviously, he's asking where he can get himself some of these spiders.
 

JimM

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Huh?

I mean, I'm glad you resurrected this thread, because I really want an update on everyone's Calisoga projects.... but huh? What are you talking about?

Anyway, how's everyone's breeding project going? I really want to pick up some slings at some point. I miss my Calisogas. Hope you all are still working on making this possible.
Seems pretty self explanatory to me...he wants to know where he can obtain this species.


I collected and kept them when I lived down in California years ago. Neat little critter. We called them "Pygmy Grey Tarantulas" back in the day.
Mean as any baboon spider, and worth establishing in the hobby.
 
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