Great food source for slings

stk5m

Arachnosquire
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My girlfriend just picked up a vile of flightless fruit flies and my sling loves them. Keep in mind that they are very small so I put in about four every two days. My sling just looked too small to eat the smallest crickets I could find so I just fed them to me A. vesicolor
 

cheetah13mo

Arachnoking
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How big is your sling? That's a pretty thin meal even for a sling.
 

Windchaser

Arachnoking
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How big is your sling? That's a pretty thin meal even for a sling.
Not to mention that they are a pain to deal with. They are constantly crawling about and it is very easy to have a ton of escapees. For very small slings I simply pre-kill small crickets. I have not had any problems doing this over the years.
 

Ando55

Arachnobaron
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Sep 15, 2006
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How big is your sling? That's a pretty thin meal even for a sling.
I concur, why don't you try to get adult crickets or even medium cricks and take off their legs and give it to the sling, an adult leg or 2 should be fine, you can also take pieces of the cricket and give the sling. Of course the 2nd method is more efficient once you have multiple slings to share the cricket that is now in many parts.
 

stk5m

Arachnosquire
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mine just would not go near a cricket even when they were dead. I keep the sides of the Tupperware moist so they can't climb up it
 

Alakdan

Arachnoangel
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Jan 24, 2006
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If you can get hold of some termites, they are a good alternative. I've been successful raising slings with termites.
 

stk5m

Arachnosquire
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any ideas on where to get termites? it's 29 degrees out and I havn't seen a bug for months.
 

Windchaser

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any ideas on where to get termites? it's 29 degrees out and I havn't seen a bug for months.
I would avoid using anything from the wild especially in large metropolitan areas. You really have no idea what types of chemicals you will introduce to your tarantulas when using wild caught prey. The only safe way to use it would be to breed it and only start feeding once you have reached the third generation or so.
 

cheetah13mo

Arachnoking
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Be patient. if you keep introducing fresh, small, dead crickets, they will get hungry and eat it. If it hasn't touched it after a few hours, remove it and try again with a fresh one the next day.
 

stonemantis

Arachnoprince
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Apr 6, 2005
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I use mini mealworms to feed my slings. They reach 1" max and they are as active if not more active than crickets.
 

bkirchner81

Arachnosquire
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Apr 17, 2006
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I, for one, like the fruit fly idea....

I tried to buy one of the vials at petsmart and they were all dead. :mad:

-But I plan on going back and getting some when a fresh shipment comes in- they will be perfect for my 1/4" White Collar. I cant find crickets small enough- but I did just catch him eating for the first time last night on an injured cricket which was bigger than him!

Pretty cool, but I would still rather have him hunt a little bit and maybe chase down and kill a fruit fly.
 

Windchaser

Arachnoking
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Everyone should know that the flightless fruit flies will almost invariably climb to the top of your vial/container. For terrestrial slings they may not come in close enough contact to try to catch them. After trying flightless fruit flies a few times I have come to the conclusion that they are just too much of a pain in the but to use. When I was giving them a try my time required for feeding easily doubled.
 

cacoseraph

ArachnoGod
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Jan 5, 2005
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another thing is that the true spider keepers (araneomorphae, i mean) seem to have problems when slings are fed exclusively on FFF's. something about lacking linoleic acid or something like that
 

ShadowBlade

Planeswalker
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Apr 1, 2006
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I breed fruitflies by the thousands, (its really quite easy). But its for my true spider breedings, not often for T's.

@Cacoseraph, I haven't had a problem raising slings on fruitflies, but as soon as they grow large enough, I incorporate small mealworms and lil' criks as well.

-Sean
 
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