Smallest spiderling to eat a roach?

[jakykong]

Hey all,

This is more of a general question, but what is the smallest spiderling that you guys start feeding Dubia roaches to?

Obviously the roaches would be small nymphs I'm just thinking, would spiderlings have softer/more easily broken fangs, so the hard roach would be a potential problem?

Specifically, I have a 1" G. pulchripes and an about 3/4" P. murinus, which I'm hoping to get off of crickets if I can (they're not worth the trouble to breed, but it's not convenient to go to the pet store every week for crickets.)... they're eating crickets comparable to small nymphs, and don't seem to have any trouble with that.

Thanks!

 

[022]

I always tought that roaches are much more soft than crickets, tough we dont have dubias here in Brazil. But I think that if they're doing well with crix, they will do just fine with roaches too

 

[jakykong]

Well, the roaches' undersides are pretty soft, but the shells certainly aren't. My rosie's not super-big, but at 4.5", feeding her a 1" roach, I can hear the crunch.

But I suppose the worst that can happen is that they don't successfully eat it. So next feeding day, I guess I start with roaches.

 

[Sam_Peanuts]

The smallest T I fed a dubia was a 1/8" C. perezmilesi. I only fed it baby roaches head though since even the smallest dubia was way too big for her and I never had any problem with broken fangs or them not eating.

All my sling were fed half a baby roach starting at around 1/4" and I've never even notice one having trouble biting the roaches shell so it's no problem at all. I'm not sure if they could bite through an adult dubia shell though since it seems to get ticker with age. I only ever hear a crunch with adult roaches, never babies.

The important thing I found is not to feed full baby dubia bigger than the sling abdomen since it will try to escape and the sling will hopelessly try to hang on while the dubia move her around for a long time(It once took an hour for one of my sling to kill the baby roach).

 

[jakykong]

Half a roach sounds like a mess. I'm thinking about crushing heads or removing a few legs or something instead?

I've noticed the roaches can keep struggling for quite a while, even with my larger rosie. Doesn't the abdomen-size rule of thumb apply even for crickets? At least that's what I've been doing.

Thanks for the info! It's strange, but a search turned up nothing useful about it. The closest thing I came across was RobC's videos, but his slings were much larger than mine...

 

[Sam_Peanuts]

Half a roach is less messy than it sounds, their internal goo may(not always) get out of them a little, but not much. I always cut them with a scalpel on the same deli cup cover and it takes a while before I need to wash it. Removing legs works nicely if you remove them all(only necessary if the roach is bigger than the sling), but it's a lot of work.

Yeah, the abdomen-size rule if for anything you feed them, but I mentioned it in case you weren't aware of it.

And yes, they will struggle for a while, even if you crush their heads and sometime even when cut in half, but Ts like to attack living thing so it's good. They will eat dead one too when they're young though, but it might take a couple of hours.

I remember answering to something similar a couple of months ago. Here it is, not precisely about feeding dubia though: http://www.arachnoboards.com/ab/showthread.php?206171-Feeding-Tiny-Slings

 

[Apollo Justice]

I've been feeding my 1/4" B. angustum whole nymph dubia roaches since I got it with no ill effect. All I do is crush the head and put it in the enclosure. I find that the smaller nymphs seem to be a lot softer than the larger ones. I've been doing this with all my slings for quite some time and haven't had any problems.


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I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=34.261163,-119.217885

 

[jakykong]

These roaches are actually fascinating... how a creature can still be thrashing about after being cut in half is really quite amazing. I can certainly understand why there is a real fear of infestation in the general public. It's surprising to me that they don't leak severely when cut like that. They always seemed like the cream-filled kind.

Y'know, my browser history shows that I've been in that thread before... I was searching for something totally different, and searches like "spiderling dubia" and "sling roach" didn't show it before I posted this one. Totally didn't connect the dots on that one.

Thanks again! Folks on this forum are always so helpful!

Half a roach is less messy than it sounds, their internal goo may(not always) get out of them a little, but not much. I always cut them with a scalpel on the same deli cup cover and it takes a while before I need to wash it. Removing legs works nicely if you remove them all(only necessary if the roach is bigger than the sling), but it's a lot of work.

Yeah, the abdomen-size rule if for anything you feed them, but I mentioned it in case you weren't aware of it.

And yes, they will struggle for a while, even if you crush their heads and sometime even when cut in half, but Ts like to attack living thing so it's good. They will eat dead one too when they're young though, but it might take a couple of hours.

I remember answering to something similar a couple of months ago. Here it is, not precisely about feeding dubia though: http://www.arachnoboards.com/ab/showthread.php?206171-Feeding-Tiny-Slings

 

[Ultum4Spiderz]

Ive fed 1/2" spiderlings roaches.... the smallest sized B dubias... 1"+ spiders luv em