Keeping Heteropoda sp. as a first true spider species?

[antinous]

My female is floating around 3.5" right now. I'm guessing wild vs captive influences max size since wild spiders have access to a wider variety of food sources and can grab large food sources, as opposed to a more consistent max size prey item in captivity.

Crickets and roaches are the staples of my huntsman diets once they get big enough. Small slings get flightless fruit flies. I've heard that venatoria are actually roach specialists, but I'm not sure how accurate that is.

That makes sense regarding the size. Wouldn't mind mine getting 5"+ haha

What size roaches can they feed on once they're adults? I'm leaning a bit more towards roaches when they're older just because I feel like they'd be easier to keep than crickets.

 

[pannaking22]

That makes sense regarding the size. Wouldn't mind mine getting 5"+ haha

What size roaches can they feed on once they're adults? I'm leaning a bit more towards roaches when they're older just because I feel like they'd be easier to keep than crickets.

I feed my adults large nymph and adult Turkistan and pallid roaches. Easy to keep, easy to culture and they are nice and active, which always gets the spider's attention (as Snark mentioned before, sparassids are very sensitive to vibrations).

 

[The Snark]

My female is floating around 3.5" right now. I'm guessing wild vs captive influences max size since wild spiders have access to a wider variety of food sources and can grab large food sources, as opposed to a more consistent max size prey item in captivity.

Crickets and roaches are the staples of my huntsman diets once they get big enough. Small slings get flightless fruit flies. I've heard that venatoria are actually roach specialists, but I'm not sure how accurate that is.

Let's not forget natural selection, especially in the dog eat dog utter chaos naked warfare of a second growth rainforest.
Personally I feel people who feed this genus or species or that one is not taking into account a lot of things. As you said, a wide variety of foods, the wider the better. So what do they eat in the wild? Let's approximate with ANY arthropod 1/4 the spiders size or smaller. So on any given feeding day they have a choice of a few hundred million entrees. Crickets of any form are very common as are the roaches but you can safely bet your last drachma that carport beast isn't going to turn down any wriggle that crosses her path. Earthworms? Millipedes? Bees? ???

 

[Hanska]

That makes sense. I remember reading about Ancylometes that were from 5" WC parents but none of the offspring got past 3.5".
I feed mostly turkistan roach but vary the diet with all kinds of flying and crawling stuff I get my hands on.

 

[pannaking22]

Let's not forget natural selection, especially in the dog eat dog utter chaos naked warfare of a second growth rainforest.
Personally I feel people who feed this genus or species or that one is not taking into account a lot of things. As you said, a wide variety of foods, the wider the better. So what do they eat in the wild? Let's approximate with ANY arthropod 1/4 the spiders size or smaller. So on any given feeding day they have a choice of a few hundred million entrees. Crickets of any form are very common as are the roaches but you can safely bet your last drachma that carport beast isn't going to turn down any wriggle that crosses her path. Earthworms? Millipedes? Bees? ???

Heck, I've even seen pictures of huntsman munching on mantids as big as they are. That's definitely some variety they don't get in captivity. I'd be curious to see what sort of affect gut loading and/or dusting food items with a supplement for captive species would have on size, along with feeding frequency. It's probably a safe bet that in the wild they're mowing down a couple prey items a day (depending on size), whereas in captivity it's up to us when they get fed.

 

[NYInsectZoo]

huntsman

I don't know how much WC vs captive bred has to do with size. I am breeding close to 25 species of sparassidae at the moment. I have several different locales of venatoria. The size varies tremendously. Coloraration of females is very similar but does vary in males. I've bred a couple generations of some locales and have not seen that much of a difference in size and growth. I do dust the fruitflies with vitamin powder and bee pollen. Whether that has something to do with it ,I am unsure. H.tetrica is another species that varies a lot in size and coloration depending on the locality where it was collected.

 

[The Snark]

I don't know how much WC vs captive bred has to do with size. I am breeding close to 25 species of sparassidae at the moment. I have several different locales of venatoria. The size varies tremendously. Coloraration of females is very similar but does vary in males. I've bred a couple generations of some locales and have not seen that much of a difference in size and growth. I do dust the fruitflies with vitamin powder and bee pollen. Whether that has something to do with it ,I am unsure. H.tetrica is another species that varies a lot in size and coloration depending on the locality where it was collected.

Any clue or guess why the size varies so greatly? This really puzzles me as I have seen mature Venatoria around here vary nearly 100% in size within a 50 square mile area. But the Nephila I've encountered from Laos through Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia only vary about 25% within species.