MBALFOURI COMMUNAL

[Matt Man]

100% agree. It's like selling baby bunnies at Easter. 90 plus percent are dead / abandoned in the 1st 6 months

 

[jrh3]

none of us are trying to prove we are right. Just do a search for communal here and go through all the threads. Everyone here is simply stating what they have seen repeatedly over the last decade.

Not a search for communal, search balfouri and 90% of the ones against it have never kept one. So they can’t speak first hand, they can only assume due to other species. Balfouri are different. Even a search here will result more success than fails. Don’t speak for everyone, I have had 2 successful communals of balfouri that were sold off and the people with them are still having success. I would encourage you to search @Blue Jaye threads on balfouri and what is documented before you make the assumption that balfouri communals don't work.

100% agree. It's like selling baby bunnies at Easter. 90 plus percent are dead / abandoned in the 1st 6 months

Simply not true for balfouri.

 

[Alveus]

So post me photos/threads /blogs of a thriving ADULT communal that has lasted years.

Here you go. Over 3 years as (sub)adults in this DIY enclosure and raised togheter from 3i silngs in a smaller one.

I started with 10 balfuris but.... 7 of them turned in to males. I gave them all to a breeder. But one i never catched... he was too causious. Or... to horny

I never got him out of the enclosure. He mated with all 3 females...

.... until the babies spilled out of the hidings.


But there was always a female checking on them.
I don't know what they exactly did. But all three of them laid down on the babies. It looked like they feed them. But they had no prayitem and i never heard of trophallaxis among spiders...

But they shared also the feeders with the youngsters

Looks annoying sometimes.

Now they're big enough and the femals don't tollerate them hanging from their chelizeras anymore. They startet to flick the youngsters away, wich looks really hillarious. But i never saw any sign of aggression.

What i think, is important for a balfouri communal enclosure is: enough hiding space. And they love to dig. So provide them with alot of digging space.

Remember my picture from the enclosure above?

It's completly hollow behind the rocks and filled with digable substrate.