seemani issues

[dragontears]

my seemani has taken another odd turn. Now she is laying in a classic molt position, except that her head is resting in her water dish while her abdomen is on the substrate. She didn't lay down a web mat and the bald spot on her abdomen never got dark to fortell a molt was coming. She has been laying on her back for about 2 1/2 days now with no sign of change. If I blow on her a bit, she'll twitch her legs and her legs are all out stretched (not in a weird upside-down death curl position). Any ideas?

I have no idea how old she is. We've had her for about 5 years now. She has molted twice in our care (the last time being about 3 years ago). Within the last three years she has fallen and broken the last section of one back leg off, but still walks on it just fine. She has been eating intermittently...maybe about once a month or so she'll lazily eat a cricket or two, and has been drinking constantly. A while back, she decided that she wanted to live in her water dish, so she pulled every little pebble out of her dish and webbed them to the wall and proceeded to sit in her dish until we relented and gave her a second water dish to drink from. Since then she really hasn't webbed anything and her spinnerettes look kind of 'clogged.' I'm kind of assuming that she is dying at this point, but does anyone have a clue as to why? :wall:

 

[Talkenlate04]

The only thing that comes to mind right off hand is that she might be dying from old age.........or a problematic molt. (which happens with old age as well)
Can you take a picture for us?

One thing is for sure laying upside down for that long means something is wrong. What exactly I cant say for sure yet a picture will help a lot.

 

[dragontears]

What do you want a photo of? I have this one:

let me know if you want something else specifically.

 

[Talkenlate04]

No thats perfect..... I just wanted to see her to see if there was anything else pointing to a problem. So this is her third day like that?

You might want to flip her over........
She responds when you blow on her right?
Weird if it was a molt it should be done and over with by now.

 

[dragontears]

we found her like that on Thursday after work.

 

[Talkenlate04]

Ok what I would do is flip her back over gently....... I will let someone else weigh in, but I think three days is to long something is going on. If she is still responding some maybe she did not mean to turn over. A few time I have had slughish Ts fall back on their back and stay that way for a while...... never more then a day though, and I think they might molt but they eventually just flip over again and go about their business.......... Its your call really, if you think its molting you can wait it out, if you dont then I would flip it over and take it from there.

 

[dragontears]

I flipped her over. She appears to have just been laying that way for whatever reason. She is weak and not very responsive though, I took a crappy video:
http://oregonstate.edu/~foxe/Zero-bright.wmv

 

[Talkenlate04]

Wow ya she was just laying there weird......... she is not near a molt but did that anyway. Thats odd...... well for now just leave her be and watch her close.......... do you notice any sort of odor coming from her tank? Try and smell close to her.......

 

[dragontears]

nope, just smells like dirt.

 

[Talkenlate04]

Well thats a good thing..... ok well hope for the best. She looks healthy enough. Keep that water dish full and fingers crossed.

 

[octoo]

I agree with keeping the waterdish full.
My little seemani was very unresponsive for a while and hung about her dish.
I topped the dish off a little bit more and she seems to have gone back to normal.

 

[dragontears]

well after a few days of hovering in her water dish she wandered off and died next to her hide. RIP little one.

 

[138]

..... .....

 

[Talkenlate04]

well after a few days of hovering in her water dish she wandered off and died next to her hide. RIP little one.

Ah man that really sucks. I am sorry to hear that. She will still go down in my book as weird. I have never seen or heard of "till you" of a T flipping over and not molting for that long and then just continuing on like that three days was forever long for it to be like that and not molt. Thats really strange. Sorry for your loss..... :8o

 

[moose35]

sorry to hear about her.

 

[dragontears]

thanks

I'm going to go with she was just really old. We can account for about 8 years of her life (with us plus with the people prior) and even 8 years ago she was full grown. She was definitely a weird spider.