Nematodes?

Varden

Arachnodemon
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Thank goodness for quarantine.

This is one of the Ts I received the week before last. It never did act quite right, but a couple days ago I noticed a yellowish-white liquid caked on the mouth parts. Last night it died and this is what I found when I flipped it over.

I have never seen anything like this!
 
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P. Novak

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Oh wow sorry to hear about that! That is just plain disgusting. What kind of T is it?
 

Varden

Arachnodemon
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Oh wow sorry to hear about that! That is just plain disgusting. What kind of T is it?

Core. sp. "Black Velvet". Kinda expensive, and I'm kinda bummed. But I'm more concerned now with whether or not anything else in my quarantine room might be affected. Nothing seems to be, but anything that ever came close to touching that T is being sterilized and I'm not even going to bother re-using the enclosure.

I did a mini I don't know what the heck I'm doing autopsy, and those worms are all the way down in it's guts!
 

P. Novak

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Core. sp. "Black Velvet". Kinda expensive, and I'm kinda bummed. But I'm more concerned now with whether or not anything else in my quarantine room might be affected. Nothing seems to be, but anything that ever came close to touching that T is being sterilized and I'm not even going to bother re-using the enclosure.

I did a mini I don't know what the heck I'm doing autopsy, and those worms are all the way down in it's guts!
Dang that really is a bummer, did you contact the person you bought it from? I wish you the best of luck that none of your other Ts get or have them.
 

Talkenlate04

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Good grief thats horrible. I know how you feel I had not seen anything visable signs before till my colbalt that passed recently, she had those visiable worms to but not nearly that many!
 

Varden

Arachnodemon
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The only other Ts at risk are the others in the quarantine room. It's actually a shed off the back yard. Nothing, not even the insects I feed them, go back and forth from that room.
 

SavageDigital

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Most of what you're seeing there appears to be fly larva - nematodes are very small as individuals. Flies lay there eggs secondary, to a primary infection (which could be nematodes) or even as a postmortem event.
 

Talkenlate04

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Nematodes can gain size, especially post death. They feast on the dead flesh and seemingly multiply faster then when the T was alive. Their sizes range from 1mm-4mm. So yes I am pretty sure those are nematodes.
And even a team of adult fruit flys or something similar could not lay that many eggs. And it died last night. Unless flys run ramped in her T room which I dont think is the case that is nematodes.
 
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Varden

Arachnodemon
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I haven't had fruit flies in my room since I moved the crickets and roaches into the shed. I've had a few people from the board visit my T room that can vouch for that. Those multiplied awfully fast overnight, but my quarantine room is a secondary shed outside, so I suppose it's not out the realm of possibility that they could have been attracted to the smell of death and moved in. But the T was alive last night and there was a thick yellowish goop covering its mouth parts. Kind of crusty around the outer edges, but wet and disgusting in the center.

@ Okitasoshi I bought this T from a very reputable and trustworthy source. He takes very good care of his stock, but if this T did die due to nematodes, then in all likelihood he purchased it already ill. Everything else I bought from him is doing fine. Nobody else is acting oddly or discharging off-color liquid. This could have happened to anybody.
 

DrAce

Arachnodemon
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Looks like nematodes to me. Is there a sweet-ish smell to the enclosure?
 

Varden

Arachnodemon
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I honestly couldn't tell you. I have absolutely no sense of smell.
 

Stylopidae

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They look more like maggots to me.

Phorid flies, maybe?

How big is the spider?
 

ShadowBlade

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Those are not nematodes. I'd say fly maggots.

And knowing who you bought it from wouldn't help. This spider was infected in the wild.

-Sean
 
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Hedorah99

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Yea, another vore for maggots. Nematodes are pretty much longer, thinner, and more worm like. Looks like a fly got to your critter just after it died.
 

Hedorah99

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Nematodes can gain size, especially post death. They feast on the dead flesh and seemingly multiply faster then when the T was alive. Their sizes range from 1mm-4mm. So yes I am pretty sure those are nematodes.
And even a team of adult fruit flys or something similar could not lay that many eggs. And it died last night. Unless flys run ramped in her T room which I dont think is the case that is nematodes.
Nematodes don't feast on dead flesh, maggots do. They are parasites usually feeding on the digesting food in the gut tract. I have seen fly strike go from an animal that died to complete infestation in less than 5 hours. One individual phorid fly can lay hundreds of eggs in no time at all. And what Shadowblade said, it may have been infested before it came in the collection. Different flies have different lifecycles.
 

JMoran1097

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Thank goodness for quarantine.

This is one of the Ts I received the week before last. It never did act quite right, but a couple days ago I noticed a yellowish-white liquid caked on the mouth parts. Last night it died and this is what I found when I flipped it over.

I have never seen anything like this!
i almost threw up. yuck! looks like maggots of a fly perhaps?
 

Stylopidae

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These aren't nematodes. The creatures in the pictures do not match the proportion of nematodes, nematodes are generally long and thin. More so than maggots. I'll be posting pictures of nematodes later tonight in this thread.

Here's more information about parasitic nematodes. It focuses mostly on insects.

Parasites are actually really common in the natural world. A lot of nematode species are actually parasitic, or opportunistic pathogens. There are even many types that infect humans.

I personally think that nematodes are over-diagnosed. I'd think that a lot of WC animals have them, just are never symptomatic because the objective of most parasites isn't to kill the host. Sometimes, the wrong species gets into the wrong animal and can cause even more havoc than it would have if it got into the right host. Sometimes something goes wrong with the host's immune system (shipping stress) and parasites take advantage of this and go overboard.

I personally think that flies are more likely than nematodes for exactly this reason. Phorid flies are about half the size of D. hydei and very hard to notice. Fruit flies wouldn't lay their eggs on rotting flesh because that isn't the way they've evolved. They generally eat rotten plant matter, not dead animal.

Phorid flies, on the other hand are an interesting group of creatures. Some cause minor damage to mushroom beds and some are parasitic on fire ants (S. invicta)...laying their eggs on the ant's head where the larvae develops.

What makes phorid flies the likely candidate is that the species that lays it's eggs on tarantulas seems to be both a parasite and a scavenger. Awhile back (6 months ago or more), I had a phorid fly infestation and they laid eggs both in the food boluses and on the tarantulas.

To take care of the problem, I set out glasses full of whiskey cut with cigarettes changed daily. I only saw maybe about 20 flies walking around during my entire infestation, but at times it seemed like I was catching 100 flies per day. It took me almost a month to take care of, but I did eventually get them taken care of.

I traced the phorid fly problem back to a shipment of crickets from a petstore I no longer do business with. I also had nematode problems traced back to crickets from a different source.

So...yeah. Long story short, I'd say that a fly either laid eggs on your spider right after it died or that phorid flies came in with your spider.

As for fruit flies, a single female drosophila melanogaster can lay up to 400 eggs and if conditions are right they can develop into adults in as little as a week, although they probably take a bit more time than that usually.
 
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SavageDigital

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I just don't have the desire to correct all the poor information that gets passed on by enthusiasts, however well intentioned it may be, and it just results in pointless arguments. But as others have already stated after me, those are fly larva (maggots) in the original photo. Much of the information concerning the nematodes affecting tarantulas (from talkenlate04) is potentially erroneous and done without even knowing what species of parasite, if any, is afflicting this specimen.

Actual tarantula nematodes are very thread like. So much so that even collecting and preserving them often destroys the specimen. You can see them here with a single (potential) fly larva in a living spider...





...these are so small/thin that once exposed outside of the tarantula's mouth, they dessicate into a semi-paste. The people I spoke with agreed that there were two infections going on here, the larger of which probably not being a nematode (though that's not proven). Even the best researchers do not fully understand through what vector nematodes parasitic to tarantulas are passed -soil, flies, crickets, etc.
 
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Varden

Arachnodemon
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Thank you, all! That was excellent information, Cheshire and Neoscales. On the downside, I'm sorry I lost a beautiful 4" Coremiocnemis. On the upside, how often do you get a really good reason to go buy whiskey and cigarettes! Woot!
 
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