- Joined
- Apr 23, 2004
- Messages
- 2,104
Well...I'm really torn as to what to do here. The first T I ever bought, "Elsie", has not been right for about 2.5-3 weeks now. She rarely moved so I wasn't really surprised when she hadn't moved in a week. After that week I took her tank down to give her some crickets and noticed that her legs were kind of curled underneath her. At first I thought she was dead but when I took the forceps and touched her her legs kinda of moved a bit.
So I removed her from her tank and placed her in an ICU. I dampened a paper towel and put it in another container, put a thin milk cap of water in there and placed her on top of the cap in case she wanted some water. Well, it's been about 1.5 since I did that and there is no sign of improvement whatsoever.
I bought her in April of 2004 and she was around 4". She has molted a few times in my care and is now around the 5" mark so being an Aphonopelma species I'm sure she is pretty old. I just have never had a T die from old age and am not sure what to look for.
Her abdomen is not shriveled at all, in fact if it weren't for the curled legs you'd never know anything was wrong with her (aside from the fact you can pick her up and she doesn't move either). I can stretch her legs out and am either met with a lot of resistance or she slowly retracts them (or possibly it's involuntary retraction). She sometimes has one fang sticking out straight down as if she's using it for traction.
If she really is on her "death bed" i'd rather put her in the freezer and put her out of her "misery" (I know they don't suffer, but it bothers me to see her like this). Any advice? I can post some webcam pics but they don't show anything out of the ordinary...just picture an adult female A. seemani with her legs curled up
Any advice?
So I removed her from her tank and placed her in an ICU. I dampened a paper towel and put it in another container, put a thin milk cap of water in there and placed her on top of the cap in case she wanted some water. Well, it's been about 1.5 since I did that and there is no sign of improvement whatsoever.
I bought her in April of 2004 and she was around 4". She has molted a few times in my care and is now around the 5" mark so being an Aphonopelma species I'm sure she is pretty old. I just have never had a T die from old age and am not sure what to look for.
Her abdomen is not shriveled at all, in fact if it weren't for the curled legs you'd never know anything was wrong with her (aside from the fact you can pick her up and she doesn't move either). I can stretch her legs out and am either met with a lot of resistance or she slowly retracts them (or possibly it's involuntary retraction). She sometimes has one fang sticking out straight down as if she's using it for traction.
If she really is on her "death bed" i'd rather put her in the freezer and put her out of her "misery" (I know they don't suffer, but it bothers me to see her like this). Any advice? I can post some webcam pics but they don't show anything out of the ordinary...just picture an adult female A. seemani with her legs curled up
Any advice?