Raising L. geometricus

[buthus]

So a diet of chopped up crickets and mealworms is ok?

Delicious! Most of the time it seems there will be at least a few slings that will not wander around and find food. Distribute the food as much as you can ...and a few wiggling pieces can help stimulate some of the shy ones.

Is it possible that this widow (actually, two of them) is a crossbred geometricus/hesperus? Maybe it's just the light, but it seems like it's a lot more hesperus-like than most of the google image results for geometricus. Plus there's only supposed to be hesperus around here.

Highly, highly unluckily. Are we still talking about the widow and sac you posted the pics of? Doesnt look like a hesp to me, not even a young one.
I am in constant look out for people along the border posting about strange widows. I'm very much interested in seeing and of course raising L.texanus. (old name. now L.hesperus and considered a morph I guess)

 

[Pulk]

Thanks.

Would it be possible to determine whether a male(?) is geometricus or hesperus without a photo?

 

[buthus]

Thanks.

Would it be possible to determine whether a male(?) is geometricus or hesperus without a photo?

Tough. Even with a photo, it could be but a guess. Hesp males can be tan to almost black. They usually have the classic hesp dorsal pattern.(seen with juv females) The geo males I have right now are a greyish brown and have a tight, white herring bone pattern. Geos are generally smaller.

 

[Pulk]

update - she now has 4 sacs not counting the removed one!

as for the male... hesperus or geometricus? is it mature?
(about 2.5 cm if the legs were stretched straight, and 2 cm in a normal semi-extended resting position.)
dorsal
ventral

how do you determine if a female is mature?

 

[Pulk]

update - she now has 4 sacs not counting the removed one!

as for the male... hesperus or geometricus? is it mature?
(about 2.5 cm if the legs were stretched straight, and 2 cm in a normal semi-extended resting position.)
dorsal
ventral

how do you determine if a female is mature?

not to be pushy or anything, but I'm still wondering... in case you didn't gather, the reason is I'm thinking of trying to breed this guy. can anyone identify his species/maturity?

 

[Canth]

Looks kinda like an L. hesperus to me

 

[buthus]

Cant really tell whats going on with that image. LOOKS like a female widow, but maturity and specie are hard to guess. The light brown in the legs leans me towards an adult or sub-adult geo or an immature hesperus. BUT, those sacs are geo sacs. So, explain whats going on in the pic... sometimes pics need to be backed up with info.

 

[Pulk]

Cant really tell whats going on with that image. LOOKS like a female widow, but maturity and specie are hard to guess. The light brown in the legs leans me towards an adult or sub-adult geo or an immature hesperus. BUT, those sacs are geo sacs. So, explain whats going on in the pic... sometimes pics need to be backed up with info.

sorry, buthus... the pic shown is the geo female that's been laying sacs. the -linked- "dorsal" and "ventral" photos are the male (?) I'm wondering about.

 

[buthus]

sorry, buthus... the pic shown is the geo female that's been laying sacs. the -linked- "dorsal" and "ventral" photos are the male (?) I'm wondering about.

Oh...doh! Ok.. yep, thats a hesp male..probably one or two molts to go.
Here is his bro...

 

[Pulk]

thank you very much.
how can you tell if a female is mature?


more importantly, it hatched today! they're bigger than i expected.
they attached the web to the lid... maybe I should cut another door in the bottom or the side?
the main reason i'm gonna let them cannibalize some is to get rid of some of the weaker ones... how long do you think i should leave it to accomplish this goal?

i'm not going to count them, but you can. well, you could, if i had a picture that showed the whole container.

 

[8+)]

Congrats!!! That of course means that it won't do any good to try to mate this female anyway...

 

[Pulk]

Congrats!!! That of course means that it won't do any good to try to mate this female anyway...

i wasn't thinking about doing that... i have two other females that are apparently -not- gravid.

i think there might be 83 babies

 

[Pulk]

this is just going to be pulk's latrodectus thread, so i don't make a new one each time i have to tell everyone something.

few days ago i found a very big (1 cm bl, but as you can see she's pretty thin right now) geometricus that actually looks like one!

come to think of it, what -is- considered large for a geo? do these molt past maturity?

 

[Pulk]

i'd like to separate the slings as late as possible while keeping a good chance there's at least one male... any advice on how to judge when to do it?

 

[buthus]

i'd like to separate the slings as late as possible while keeping a good chance there's at least one male... any advice on how to judge when to do it?

Geo slings go nutzo cannibalistic once they start feeding.
Split them up into a few (more? ) groups and feed them both small live prey and chunks of meal worms, crix, roaches etc. ...and feed them often...keep the little buggers plump and lazy. Watch for the quickest molters ...often those will be males. Watch for palps ...u can often catch them early ...seemingly not as easy with geos but 3 or 4 molts. Grab a few of those when you first see them ..hopefully youll get some males that way and those you can slow down on the feeding. Keeping males alive long enough for fems from the same sac can be tough. Those males will probably be best used for breeding with new blood.

 

[Pulk]

they started eating each other yesterday and have indeed gone nutzo cannibalistic.
so you think it's necessary to separate them right now to get a male? i don't need a lot of males.

 

[Rizzolo]

just a couple of things. actually, geometricus are less hardy in my opinion than some other species, e.g. L hesperus. geos tend to be timid too, so will sometimes drop to the bottom of the container and play dead when they are surprised. don't be alarmed, they come back after a while. also, they tend to be reclusive and like to stay in their hide, so provide a hide for your female to help her not be too stressed.

the slings need humidity. you will lose a lot of them otherwise. you can mist the inside of your container every once in a while, as long as it has good ventilation. those fiber lids for deli containers work great for widow slings. they ventilate well and are impervious to the slings. you can even spray the top of the lid and it will humidify the inside of the container. do not let water pool in the bottom of the container.

once you separate them into deli cups, you can keep them stacked in plastic shoe boxes and spray the inside of the shoe box lightly once a week or so. this will really reduce the losses, if you care.

also, the geo slings are really small, so good food is D melanogaster. bigger widow slings, like bishopi and revivensis can eat D hydei right away (at 2nd to 3rd instar), but geos have a hard time and many will not eat. some people have good luck with prekilled food for slings. cut up a meal worm, maggot, waxworm or the like and stuff it in there. it gets nasty pretty quickly and is time consuming though.
good luck

 

[Pulk]

thanks! -

yeah, i think a few of the ones playing dead fooled me.
the female doesn't have a hide except the one she made, and doesn't seem stressed at all. she's made seven sacs.
so, if the little cups they're in have air holes, spraying over the whole thing is sufficient?
i'm going to have to feed them on basically only dead/chopped up food; i don't have easy access to fruit flies or pinheads. there are so many of them, i can take the losses.

 

[Rizzolo]

after trying both ways, spraying or dripping water into the cups, and just misting in their secondary container, i can say without reservation that the second option is superior (and easier!). putting water into their deli cups causes too much humidity i think. they get funky and some end up dead in the water drops. hard to know how that happened (died and ended up in water, or drowned). i think that the additional wetness is asking for mold and other nasty stuff to grow. the containers get funky enough without adding the moisture.

i have seen slings drink too. and certainly if you have a bunch in one container and you have a fiber top, misting is fine. they will drink if they are stressed and the water will evaporate very quickly (won't get nasty). i assume that the humidity prevents them from losing too much water, so that they can then make it up sufficiently through their food.

i have many times thrown out deli cups in which i though the sling had died, later to find them still alive. in fact last night i discovered about 10 revivensis cups with little slings that had been there without food or water for about 2-3 weeks. they looked fine.

i is difficult to put enough holes in a deli cup to allow good ventilation (to prevent funkiness). they will climb out the holes if they are too big, and i don't have time to put a gazilliion little holes in a gazillion little cups.

the reason i use the D melanogaster, or D hydei for feeding them is that it is many times faster. i can open 5-10 cups at a time, and pour the flies into each, closing them with the other hand. i put the flies into a big vial and you can continually tap it to keep the flies inside, while you pour away. if i had not found this method, i would have given up on raising widows a long time a ago.

 

[Pulk]

after trying both ways, spraying or dripping water into the cups, and just misting in their secondary container, i can say without reservation that the second option is superior (and easier!). putting water into their deli cups causes too much humidity i think. they get funky and some end up dead in the water drops. hard to know how that happened (died and ended up in water, or drowned). i think that the additional wetness is asking for mold and other nasty stuff to grow. the containers get funky enough without adding the moisture.

i have seen slings drink too. and certainly if you have a bunch in one container and you have a fiber top, misting is fine. they will drink if they are stressed and the water will evaporate very quickly (won't get nasty). i assume that the humidity prevents them from losing too much water, so that they can then make it up sufficiently through their food.

i have many times thrown out deli cups in which i though the sling had died, later to find them still alive. in fact last night i discovered about 10 revivensis cups with little slings that had been there without food or water for about 2-3 weeks. they looked fine.

i is difficult to put enough holes in a deli cup to allow good ventilation (to prevent funkiness). they will climb out the holes if they are too big, and i don't have time to put a gazilliion little holes in a gazillion little cups.

the reason i use the D melanogaster, or D hydei for feeding them is that it is many times faster. i can open 5-10 cups at a time, and pour the flies into each, closing them with the other hand. i put the flies into a big vial and you can continually tap it to keep the flies inside, while you pour away. if i had not found this method, i would have given up on raising widows a long time a ago.

thanks again, I got everything except one thing, by tapping a vial to keep the flies inside do you mean knocking back in the ones that are climbing out?

this is kind of vague, but... how difficult is maintaining a fly culture?
how many flies do you get minimum from a culture?
how much space is necessary for one?