ID and behavioral help...

[missella]

Hello, I am new here and I have a few questions about my new tarantula. Acquiring her was strange, seeing as I adopted her from a reptile show the last weekend of October and no one at the show could properly ID her. She has been sexed as female but the fact that I do not know an exact species has made it a little difficult in giving her the optimum care I think I can give her (ex: specific humidity, etc.) so if anyone could help me ID her or give me suggestions on what to do, that would be great.

Another thing. I left her with my roommate over this past break (she has a decent amount of exposure to tarantula care and I gave her an emergency number in town if she needed it) but when I called today she had told me that my tarantula had not been eating. She is relatively small in size and this time I had gotten her crickets that were a bit larger since she had been eating the smaller ones like crazy (one almost every day). It's been two weeks since she's eaten but she hasn't been showing many signs to indicate that she's ready to molt. The photo attached shows how she was when I got her. She had already been very stressed out previous to me purchasing her. I was wondering if anyone thought I should change back to smaller crickets, or if it might just be a combination of stress and/or getting ready to molt?

 

[mickey66]

what size is this tarantula? I have a baby Tarantula that looks like this one or close to it.....Aphonopelma Sp. "Payson" NOW having said this my baby has the same color with dark bans on the femurs but as this T molts it will change color to a chocolate brown then it will get lighter more of a brown/blond with black bans on the legs....this is why I asked what size is your spider. IF, it is about 1 inch in size I would say Aphonopelma Sp. "Payson"

 

[Chris_Skeleton]

Has it's abdomen got darker? It may be just an upcoming molt, refusal of food is a sign.

As far as ID, it looks like some sort of Brachypelma to me.

 

[missella]

Yeah, she is about an inch in size so it might that species. It's been difficult because I got her with her with tons of hairs kicked off.
She was rescued from some drug bust along with 40 other tarantulas so I'm sure she wasn't kept well.

As for her not eating...she wasn't discolored when I left which was around the 17th. She ate that day but had problems eating during that week. It sounds like she hasn't really eaten anything since. I think I'll wait until I get back on Saturday and see for myself what's going on with her. Just worried I'm stressing her out too much or that she's just been put through too much stress overall.

 

[Moltar]

She probably isn't eating because you've been overfeeding the crap outta her! One small cricket every other week is more appropriate than every other day. She may be gearing up for a molt and you'll see her bum darken soon enough. When you feed uber-heavy it can come on quickly like that.

As for the species, I'm thinking A. anax or A. hentzi, or some other sort of black-n-tan native Aphonopelma.

 

[malevolentrobot]

Has it's abdomen got darker? It may be just an upcoming molt, refusal of food is a sign.

As far as ID, it looks like some sort of Brachypelma to me.

if its big enough to sex, colouring looks wrong for any common Brachypelma i've had as a sling, even if in need of a moult. i could be wrong though...

i'm going with some sort of Aphonopelma as well as my two cents, but the likes of which i do not know.

 

[webbedone]

If its refusing food its probably getting ready to molt it, and it may take up to two weeks or more for it to forge its new exoskeleton under the old one. And i am going with one of the Aphonopelma species as well

 

[razor244]

its just getting ready for a molt... i only feed my larger T's once a week but my slings i feed very often(just like you) to get them to the juvi stage. sometimes they will just get very fat and not eat becuase they are so full. they will then be content and just sit around and wait for a molt.