Odd Death

[Tarantula155]

I've been raising Parasteatoda tepidariorum for a while now and recently I lost my largest juvenile specimen to some kind of disease from her prey.

It's getting cold where I live, so going out finding living insects is quite difficult. Luckily, I live in a city where cockroaches practically thrive in every home.. so I have an overabundance supply of spider food , although I have to catch them late at night when they come out.

Anyways, my spider lived off little cockroaches that I've been finding in my house.. until just recently I found an odd roach that was out during the day on the floor of my kitchen (this is the first strange sign, they only come out at night from my experience) and when I caught the little sucker he was a bit sluggish. Stupid me, this should of been a sign to not feed it to one of my spidersoh:

Well, my largest tepidariorum juvenile snatched it fast and I thought I'd be good with feeding for another week. I woke up the next morning to find my spider twitching in place, hardly moving at all. I thought she might just be molting (but she molted a week before this meal). I was reluctant to mess with her at all, just let her be and maybe she can fight off whatever she's ill with.

Sadly, the day after.. she was on the floor of her container dead.

Easily one of the strangest death incidents I've ever encountered. I'm still not 100% sure this is what caused it, but she was absolutely fine and an aggressive glutton before this roach.

Has anyone ever experienced such a thing?

 

[fowlmoodmandy]

Most likely that roach had been exposed to insect killer. That being said, if the T ate the roach then you know the rest of the story.

 

[Tarantula155]

Most likely that roach had been exposed to insect killer. That being said, if the T ate the roach then you know the rest of the story.

Thing is, I don't own any insect killers of any kind! I took that in consideration, but we don't own any of that stuff in our home.

 

[Pandinus97]

It doesn't need to be insect killer, even something as simple as soap,vinegar or any disinfectant could do it, I would be very cautious whenever using pest roaches as a feeder.

 

[fowlmoodmandy]

And often the roach could come in from somewhere else. They have ways of getting into your house. It doesn't mean it's always lived there.

 

[Malhavoc's]

Thing is, I don't own any insect killers of any kind! I took that in consideration, but we don't own any of that stuff in our home.

Roaches also have built up some resistance to a lot of chemicals they are exposed to, does not mean they are not imbued with it, and thus lethal to whatever eats them

 

[The Snark]

And of course, roaches can adapt to eat things, materials, that are inedible to just about any other animal. Plastics, electrostatic dust, grease grime, floor covering glue, latex, powdered metals to name a few. There is a mutated variety of cockroach in NYC that prefers the insulation of wiring found in appliances and entertainment systems.

 

[Beary Strange]

It doesn't need to be insect killer, even something as simple as soap,vinegar or any disinfectant could do it, I would be very cautious whenever using pest roaches as a feeder.

I agree. Once wild caught specimens are in my home, they're fed the same CB diet my tarantulas and scorpions are. In fact, I find my WC spiders to be really good "trash bins"--if one of my Ts won't eat an already injured prey item I give it to the L.hesperus so it's not wasted.