Grammastola Pulchra - buried

[TheraMygale]

I really enjoy going to that show. Even if I'm not buying anything, it is always a good time. Everyone is so nice
Do you sell T's?

Youre lucky your so close to people like @cold blood. None of the members here are close to me.

i get your need to clarify your research and its 100% valid and helps us get to know you.

guess what?

i didnt see the video Tom put out of a entry point to burrow. Even if he is one of the only two youtube keepers i trust.

but, i need to say, i did that. Im that one person who opened up a burrow. More then once too. I didnt go digging deep. I just opened it. I also could see my tarantulas in their burrows. I set out prekilled and them came out and ate. Once i set live too. I like to test things for myself. I also research a lot.

my experience is not a golden ticket. But this happened. And my tarantulas lived and molted. Its just another keepers story.

I wont be the one to tell a member to dig up the burrow because i dont know their entite history, nore the tarantulas. Im just sharing my own hands own experience.

 

[Gevo]

I appreciate any and all information given. I did however want to at least state the effort I put in well in advance of taking responsibility over a new T. Someone previously had mentioned Tom's Big Spiders channel. I have followed his youtube for a long time. And earlier this month he put out a G.Pulchra video specifically stating he uncovered a burrow opening to feed a T that have buried, molted, and failed to resurface. This was my motive for posting the inquiry. Prior to his video, I'd always heard "never touch the burrow", but he did, and I do see him as a trusted source of information in the hobby. So, I was looking for supporting information. This forum is also an excellence source of information. And I do thank everyone for taking the time to reply.

Specific to that, there are a couple of things I can offer:

- your sling has been buried for nearly 3 months, which isn’t unusual. I think my G. pulchra was a little bigger than yours when he burrowed last year, but he was buried for about 6 months and was fine, but I was able to check on him through a side window to assure me of that
- Tom has talked a couple of times about G. pulchra in particular burrowing away, and many of his listeners have shared similar stories
- This seems to be a known problem when slings and small juveniles have room to burrow, which is why some members here emphasize smaller enclosures for them
- The danger of opening up a burrow is that you could interrupt a molting spider or cave it in on the spider
- A lot of people, especially new keepers, haven’t learned enough patience for tarantula keeping and open burrows prematurely because it’s hard to trust the process

That said, here’s what I did to encourage my G. pulchra to resurface a few weeks after he molted, and I could see he was hardened up and should be ready to eat: I took a chopstick and, near the top of his burrow entrance right by the cork bark, I just poked a very small hole through the dirt, figuring that if he didn’t like it, he’d block it back up and that it was small and unobtrusive enough to not really affect the burrow. It worked. Once he realized there was a small opening, he opened the rest of the entrance up overnight and was sitting there with hungry legs out the next morning. I did not drop food in before seeing that he was ready to eat. If you offer any food before seeing your tarantula, make it pre-killed.

This I thought was better than Tom Moran’s suggestion of moistening everything down and slowly digging it out because it’s much less of a disturbance. In my case it worked, but as I said, I knew he had molted a few weeks prior and was hardened up and should be ready to eat again at that point.

 

[Div129]

My adult D.pentaloris burries itself for half of the year, usually around the end of the year to the middle of the year. I used to worry about it the first time it did this but it’s been 4 years and like clock work it “hibernates”, they don’t really hibernate but you know what i mean. Room temp stays the same all year around and no other T i have does this.

I also find the method @Gevo mentioned above works. I will poke a hole in the webbing in the middle of the year, if she thinks it’s too early she will web it back up. But once she is out she is almost always out (well until the end of the year).