how to care for newly hatched orb weavers ?

[Jakub0161z]

I have recently hatched 2 argiope bruennichi orb weaver egg sacs and the spiders have molted once they have started to eat however they aren't molting and I have also noticed that about 10 have died i keep them in 2 enclosures unseparated, I have never hatched a egg sac so i don't know how fast they are suppose to be growing , when to separate them and if something is wrong. Any advice or tips would be appreciated.

 

[chanda]

Their natural instinct is going to be to scatter. In the wild, they would climb up someplace high, spin out a thread, and go ballooning, dispersing over a wider area to have more food and less competition. In captivity, of course, they will not be able to do this - so they are going to cannibalize each other. You can mitigate the cannibalism somewhat by offering fruit flies or other alternative prey, but expect to lose a lot of the spiderlings along the way. (There is a high mortality rate in the wild, too - that's why they have so many babies in the first place. If all (or even most) of the babies survived to adulthood, we'd quickly be overrun with spiders!) When the population gets down to more manageable numbers, you may want to separate the spiders to prevent further cannibalism. When separated, they'll still need large enough containers, with sufficient attachment points, to spin webs.

What kind of enclosure are you keeping them in? They would do best in a well-ventilated enclosure (I like pop-up mesh butterfly or insect cages) with lots of branching twigs or other attachment points for webs. Substrate is not important as long as ambient humidity is kept up (which can be challenging if you live in a cool climate and have indoor heating running.) If the air in your house is really dry, you can maintain the humidity for the spiders by adding some sort of substrate (dirt, coconut fiber, even paper towels) and moistening it periodically.

 

[Jakub0161z]

chanda thanks for the information, i am keeping them in a 30cm x30cm tub with mesh on top I'll probably separate them when they molt again, once again thanks for the information it will help me out a lot.