Ive had insanely bad luck with my spiders ive bought here in the USA since my move over here. I put it down to bad luck and not bad care, yesterdays death made me decide to buy a few more animals, something that i know to be generally vigorous and easy.
Heres whats happened in last 5 years. Bought the following animals in 2005 and tells briefly what happened and when.
2x blondi spiderlings: a year into ownership i fed them a batch of shop bought crickets, within days both had 'white mouth paste' and died.
2x blondi juveniles: both got same mouth paste when fed the same cricket batch as the spiderlings but after keeping dry and watered on tissue paper recovered! one moulted and lost fangs..died through no food. one grew to good sized individual but in 3rd year got something like dyskinetic syndrome and was dead within a week.
3x megaphobema robustum spiderlings: grew well into 2 young adult females, one died suddely in december 2010 and dissecting revealed weird hard chitin like granules in clumps in abdomen! immature male moulted yesterday feb 2011 (still immature on emergence) but when found had either had ill formed/ruptured chelicera or a damn roach that was hidden buried had found him and nibbled him as he was emerging...(ok,that was bad on my part but its difficult to locate those critters if not eaten, and i had no idea that guy was due to moult). 3rd one a nice young adult female, still alive, though small, 6 inches.
4x king baboon spiderlings: all grew well, 2 are now large juvenile females, i also had 2 mature out as males, one dies of old age and the other got a dyskinetic like illness, i froze him then found a long worm like and tough (ie not a fragile organ like consistency) object inside, im assuming its a parasite that opportunistically got in him.
2x phormictopus cancerides spidelings, seem to be inbred? after 5 years one is only 1 3/4 inches across and the other no more than 3, ive never known these spiders to grow so slowly.
Ive kept spiders for 25 years and never had issues like this in the first 20!
anyway im not to be deterred, im going to hunt down a lasiodora parahybana, a curly hair, or something that i know should grow fast and live well...I now feed on roaches to avoid 'white paste' from crickets and im going to be extra vigilent this year regarding my dogs anti tick treatment, i was using frontline and that stuff kills ticks easy, so no doubt the hairs floating round the house arent good news for spiders!
so out of 13 spiders bought i now have 5 including the 2 'runts', not very impresive!!
anyway, kinda venting, but determined.
Heres whats happened in last 5 years. Bought the following animals in 2005 and tells briefly what happened and when.
2x blondi spiderlings: a year into ownership i fed them a batch of shop bought crickets, within days both had 'white mouth paste' and died.
2x blondi juveniles: both got same mouth paste when fed the same cricket batch as the spiderlings but after keeping dry and watered on tissue paper recovered! one moulted and lost fangs..died through no food. one grew to good sized individual but in 3rd year got something like dyskinetic syndrome and was dead within a week.
3x megaphobema robustum spiderlings: grew well into 2 young adult females, one died suddely in december 2010 and dissecting revealed weird hard chitin like granules in clumps in abdomen! immature male moulted yesterday feb 2011 (still immature on emergence) but when found had either had ill formed/ruptured chelicera or a damn roach that was hidden buried had found him and nibbled him as he was emerging...(ok,that was bad on my part but its difficult to locate those critters if not eaten, and i had no idea that guy was due to moult). 3rd one a nice young adult female, still alive, though small, 6 inches.
4x king baboon spiderlings: all grew well, 2 are now large juvenile females, i also had 2 mature out as males, one dies of old age and the other got a dyskinetic like illness, i froze him then found a long worm like and tough (ie not a fragile organ like consistency) object inside, im assuming its a parasite that opportunistically got in him.
2x phormictopus cancerides spidelings, seem to be inbred? after 5 years one is only 1 3/4 inches across and the other no more than 3, ive never known these spiders to grow so slowly.
Ive kept spiders for 25 years and never had issues like this in the first 20!
anyway im not to be deterred, im going to hunt down a lasiodora parahybana, a curly hair, or something that i know should grow fast and live well...I now feed on roaches to avoid 'white paste' from crickets and im going to be extra vigilent this year regarding my dogs anti tick treatment, i was using frontline and that stuff kills ticks easy, so no doubt the hairs floating round the house arent good news for spiders!
so out of 13 spiders bought i now have 5 including the 2 'runts', not very impresive!!
anyway, kinda venting, but determined.
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