Excellent steady apartment temperatures, my house can drop down to 50F and I live in Southern Cal.My apartment is a steady 70 degrees. Is it a good idea to use a 60 watt daylight bulb to keep my cages warmer. I have an a. vesicolor and an a. avic.
Agree70 degrees is fine. They'll just grow a bit slower.
-Sean
Do you know if any of this applies to A. hentzi as far north as Missouri? I've caught a few and they don't seem to have very deep burrows. I'm guessing around 6 or 8 inches below the surface. That would get close to freezing for a few months out of the year.Negative effects from temperature weren't seen until prolonged exposure to 50s or below.
I agree completely with Chip. I haven't been keeping mine quite as long but I have never used any type of additional heat. During the winters my house usually stays in the upper 60's to lower 70's and I haven't experienced any problems.I've been keeping Ts since 1981 or so and have yet to keep them at anything other than plain old room temp. If you've got temps at 70 or above for 9 months out of the year, I wouldn't even worry about some 60ish temps in the winter. I know I never have.
Someone, Baerg, I believe, did a study of how they reacted to temperature. At anything in the 60s or above, they did fine (just slower). Negative effects from temperature weren't seen until prolonged exposure to 50s or below.
If it was Baerg who did the study, he did it almost exclusively with California Aphonopelma species, so the findings would be very applicable to Missouri Aphonopelma moreso than, say, a Brazilian jungle dweller. The key part of the study was prolonged. These spiders were held at temps in the 50s for months on end and began dying off around the 9-12 month mark. A seasonal cold spell would likely be of no consequence for any but the most tropical of "hot house flowers".Do you know if any of this applies to A. hentzi as far north as Missouri? I've caught a few and they don't seem to have very deep burrows. I'm guessing around 6 or 8 inches below the surface. That would get close to freezing for a few months out of the year.