Solfugid question

[dragontears]

Argh! I just typed this long post and it disappeared! Grr.

Anyway...to re-cap

My solfugid died last night. He was fine at 4:30pm...he was meandering around his tank and soaking up some heat and appeared normal and healthy. At 7:30 his abdomen was deflated and wet and looked...odd... He was still moving around and if we took the lid off the tank he would start running like nothing was wrong. I watched him for an hour or so and he really started to slow down, he didn't react much to stimuli and we even took him out to get pictures and he hardly moved. I decided to put him down since it was obvious that he wasn't going to make it through the night. I felt so bad! I've never had one of my T's bust their abdomen so I don't know what it looks like, but I would imagine that it is similar.

My question is do you have any theories as to how this happened? There isn't anything in his tank that he could hurt himself on and he has never climbed up the side of his tank so I don't think he could have fallen. My only guess is that a beetle bit him as there were still a couple beetles in there for him to eat from yesterday. I'm not even sure if this is possible...has anyone ever heard of this before?

I have pictures of him that I took 2 days ago as well as some we took before we cooled him down. I'll have to wait until after work today to get them up to my webspace, but in the meantime I was wondering if anyone had any theories on what happened to him

RIP little guy.

 

[dragontears]

here are pics:

When we got him in Sept:

2 days ago:

yesterday:

 

[Steven Gielis]

You can see on the last picture that the animal is wounded. Probably it has been bitten by one of the beetles. Beetles aren't that good for food for solifugae. They are to hard! Many solifugae are specialised in eating soft bodied insects, like termites. This Zeria sp. is no exception. I think we still see these animals as voracious predators. But actually many of the species are very fragile and very specialised in preychoise.

 

[dragontears]

You can see on the last picture that the animal is wounded. Probably it has been bitten by one of the beetles. Beetles aren't that good for food for solifugae. They are to hard! Many solifugae are specialised in eating soft bodied insects, like termites. This Zeria sp. is no exception. I think we still see these animals as voracious predators. But actually many of the species are very fragile and very specialised in preychoise.

we were feeding him beetles because that is the only thing we found that he would eat.
This is the thread that I started when I got him if you are interested:
http://www.arachnoboards.com/ab/showthread.php?t=52441

You live and learn I guess, I've never heard of beetles being harmful for their predators. I don't think I'll be getting another solfugid anyway. This guy was really cool, but kind of a sporadic purchase and I feel really bad about it.

 

[Steven Gielis]

Species of solifugids wich are specialized in eating termites don't hunt that active. Normally the termites yust walk accross at the nesting place. So feeding can be very difficult in captivity.
Tha last species I had, possibly Rhagodes phalangium is specialized in eating Messor ants. But lucky for me they accepted lobster roaches wich I mostly gave them with a pincet.