T VAGANS sling burried itself

[longlegs666]

Hello friends! First time sling owner. Got this guy from the pet store cuz i saw they gave him basically no substrate and no water dish. The minute I got him in a deeper container (he had .5 inches at pet store and I gave him 4 inches) it took him only 10 hours to burrow under the cork bark and seal it up. I know not to disturb them... but it's been over a month. He looked fat af so not super worried but can anyone tell from these pics/vids if he was getting close to premolt? Gonna start leaving pre-killed crickets every night just to see if he is actually coming out at night. These slings are hardy but I still worry! I have a bold jumper and juvenil Aphonopelma seemanni also! Thanks for looking!

 

[Ratmosphere]

Normal. Big and fat, might molt soon.

Good luck!

 

[Brewser]

No Worries, Needs time alone. Do not disturb, and Welcome A Boards.
Best Regards to You Two.

 

[kingshockey]

you still gotta while its a fatty just remember the blacker the butt the closer it will be to a molt

 

[Mustafa67]

Hello friends! First time sling owner. Got this guy from the pet store cuz i saw they gave him basically no substrate and no water dish. The minute I got him in a deeper container (he had .5 inches at pet store and I gave him 4 inches) it took him only 10 hours to burrow under the cork bark and seal it up. I know not to disturb them... but it's been over a month. He looked fat af so not super worried but can anyone tell from these pics/vids if he was getting close to premolt? Gonna start leaving pre-killed crickets every night just to see if he is actually coming out at night. These slings are hardy but I still worry! I have a bold jumper and juvenil Aphonopelma seemanni also! Thanks for looking!

Normal, don’t worry

 

[DaveM]

Sounds great, and good for you as a first time sling owner for knowing what to do in advance

 

[fcat]

She's super cute, congrats and welcome to the boards

 

[viper69]

Yes

 

[cold blood]

After raising tens of thousands of slings I can tell you this, you don't want to provide a terrestrial sling with too much substrate....do so and what happens nearly every time is that they burrow away excessively....they rarely, sometimes never, come out looking to feed, which hampers growth rates by 4-6 times, it also makes it impossible to monitor your sling effectively....you want to be able to see it, so you know if anything is not right, and you want your sling to be eating regularly and growing out of the fragile sling stage fairly quickly.....none of this occurs when you give slings enough substrate to disappear in.

IMG_0472

• cold blood
• Feb 7, 2017

Keep your small terrestrial slings like this.

 

[gabrieldezzi]

Hello friends! First time sling owner. Got this guy from the pet store cuz i saw they gave him basically no substrate and no water dish. The minute I got him in a deeper container (he had .5 inches at pet store and I gave him 4 inches) it took him only 10 hours to burrow under the cork bark and seal it up. I know not to disturb them... but it's been over a month. He looked fat af so not super worried but can anyone tell from these pics/vids if he was getting close to premolt? Gonna start leaving pre-killed crickets every night just to see if he is actually coming out at night. These slings are hardy but I still worry! I have a bold jumper and juvenil Aphonopelma seemanni also! Thanks for looking!

huge fatty, will molt soon id say..

 

[Nitroxide]

Ooh yeah definitely will molt soon! As others mentioned, leave him be and don't stress about it too much - hopefully he molts soon! Super exciting the first time!

 

[longlegs666]

After raising tens of thousands of slings I can tell you this, you don't want to provide a terrestrial sling with too much substrate....do so and what happens nearly every time is that they burrow away excessively....they rarely, sometimes never, come out looking to feed, which hampers growth rates by 4-6 times, it also makes it impossible to monitor your sling effectively....you want to be able to see it, so you know if anything is not right, and you want your sling to be eating regularly and growing out of the fragile sling stage fairly quickly.....none of this occurs when you give slings enough substrate to disappear in.

IMG_0472

• cold blood
• Feb 7, 2017

Keep your small terrestrial slings like this.

Huh I guess I've always heard to give slings of any kind room to burrow as it's a natural instinct to help keep them feel safe. My sling is bigger then an inch and I gave them about 3 or 4 inches. They like to burrow even when adults too.

 

[TheraMygale]

Personaly, i would have opened up burrow before a month. And left a prekill.

its happened to me and when i did that, things went back to normal. These were not 1” slings though. smaller.

if the pattern continues, where a tarantula seals itself off and doesnt take the prekill, then i leave it alone. Mostly 2” and above.

but if its not fat and has no reason to be sealed off, its usualy because something else is off, like room temp etc.

Huh I guess I've always heard to give slings of any kind room to burrow as it's a natural instinct to help keep them feel safe. My sling is bigger then an inch and I gave them about 3 or 4 inches. They like to burrow even when adults too.

It will feel safe in the tiny deli cup because it can touch the top. So the cup becomes the burrow/hide.

slings dig indeed. Its what they do in the wild to protect themselves from predators. Such predators are absent in our homes. They can truely just dig and forget to come up to eat because in the wild, food can come down the burrow.

i use a hide thats half burried. Thats my strategy in small enclosures for slings.

now my personal issue is need to go bigger. They keep burying the water bowl and moving dirt around. This is a symptom of small enclosure, in many cases, involving young tarantulas under 2”. My g pulchripes are doing this. All three of them. So i know its a sign. They never did before. And started it doing it when they got big recently.

 

[cold blood]

Huh I guess I've always heard to give slings of any kind room to burrow as it's a natural instinct to help keep them feel safe. My sling is bigger then an inch and I gave them about 3 or 4 inches. They like to burrow even when adults too.

That natural instinct and need to feel safe are exactly why I house them like I do.

First, let's take the natural instinct aspect.....while it's true that in the wild their instincts will encourage them to burrow away....but why? They do so for all the reasons NOT present in captivity....bad weather and predators being the primary reasons....another thing to consider is that it's not necessarily the best for survival UNLESS those adverse conditions and predators are present. Think about this, in the wild, only a tiny percentage of slings survive to adulthood.....hiding all the time means less exposure to food, and much slower growth as a result....meaning slings will be in that vulnerable sling stage MUCH longer....by getting them more regular meals we can get them out of the sling stage MUCH quicker, and as a result, captive ts see the exact opposite survival rates as the wild, where in captivity, only a small percentage will fail to reach adulthood under optimal conditions.

Now lets take on that feel safe aspect....when you house a sling as I showed, they adopt the whole cup as their defacto burrow, in fact they feel so safe, they rarely burrow at all, but even when they do, it's not in a manner that separates them from the food sources....so they eat consistently and grow much faster.

It's fine to understand how they live in the wild, but IMO, it's a huge mistake to replicate when we can offer better, safer, more stable conditions in captivity that make for a healthier, longer lived animal.

In fact this is true almost across the board with animals of all sorts...wild dogs on average live about half as long as pets, captive seals and sea lions live on average 3 times as long as wild counterparts, and I could go on almost forever with examples like this and tarantulas are no different....this is simply because captive conditions are generally far superior and make life much easier.