My first spider

[cliff]

Collected my first spider today, a pretty little Latrodectus hesperus. Housing her in a 1 gal. plastic jar with no substrata and an artificial plant which goes up about 3/4 of the jar. Looking forward to watching her lifestyle. A couple of questions. How long before I offer her food? also I see ants in their webs, is this an acceptable food source.

Thanks

Cliff

 

[darkness]

Look im not sure but if u go to the chatroom u can get the answer quick and easy. yo bud
DARKNESS

 

[funnylori]

Ants and spiders

I do believe that ants and spiders do not get along. Ants can easily dismantal a spider and eat it. It would be better to offer the spider a moth or fly, if it doesnt eat it in a few hours then wait for a day or two and try again.

Good luck with your new friend.

 

[buthus]

On the subject of ants. I believe ants are a large part of a young hesperus' development. They are a good source of carbs and amino acids. Most of the time when I find small slings, they have built webs right above ant highways ...usually small red or brown ants. I have raised a few slings all the way to sub-adulthood exclusively on ants and they grew fast and healthy. I have never seen an ant win the battle over a widow sling... it is vertually impossible for the ant to kill a sling in the web. Though I have witnessed ants fighting off my jumper slings ...usually to die soon after being bitten by the sling. I wish I would have had this on video... I fed an ant to one of my jumper slings and the ant grabbed its front leg. The struggle lasted for about a minute with the result of the sling missing its leg. The funny thing about it is the ant carried around the leg thinking it had some food to bring back to the nest and the jumper continued to stalk the ant immediatly after loosing the leg. Took a few hours for the jumper to summon up the courage to attack the ant again, but when it did, it did it right the second round.
But, back to feeding widows. They eat anything and slings will take food 3 or more times their size. I no longer feed my widows local roaches or crickets unless found far from human population, because I have poisoned a few of my spiders. I do regularly feed my widows earwigs from the yard. They love them. Earwigs are probably the staple food for local widows in my area. Crickets and roaches are smart about avoiding webbing, but earwigs seek out webbing to look for carcasses. Widows will attach lines to carcasses and other debris at ground level so to detect those scavengers.

 

[mackids]

I have 2 variolus widows that I have had from the time they were slings. I feed them both ants and they have no problem with them (I actually trust the larger species of ants). I do mix up the diet with the occasional cricket, i figure like any creature its good to have varied meals.

Anyway good luck with it they are definately beautiful and fun to watch!

 

[Spider Tyrant]

I concur with the two previous opinions. Every time I have raised young Hesperi, I have fed them ants. I often could not get flightless fruit flies, and they were a great substitute. I obviously wouldnt put more than one or two in there at a time, but otherwise you should be fine.

 

[funnylori]

I take back my original opinion about ants and spiders, spiders will eat ants without problem as long as the spider is not overwhelmed by a swarm of ants; however I have seen cases where carnivorous ants have decimated tarantulas and so it is more that tarantulas and ants should never be combined less the risk off loss. The reason tarantulas tend to abhor ants is likely do to a chemical sensitivity to the formic acid (or some other chemical) ants have, the adult tarantulas I have seen that encountered ants have allways left in a hurry. I am not as sure regarding immature tarantulas using ants as a food source.