This isn't what I had in mind

[pategirl]

I've been attempting to breed tarantulas for a couple months now with no luck yet, and I made the statement to someone not too long ago that I just wanted an eggsac, and didn't care what it was from. Well, my female black widow must have heard me say that, because i discovered her with an eggsac this morning. Apparently she was already gravid when I caught her this past fall. I'm going to be a grandmother to a bunch of little widows.....what fun.

 

[Code Monkey]

Originally posted by pategirl
Well, my female black widow must have heard me say that, because i discovered her with an eggsac this morning. Apparently she was already gravid when I caught her this past fall.

Widows actually store the sperm from mating for the rest of their lives. If she's been mated, it won't just be this one egg sac, it will be several, which depending on your outlook could be good or bad.

The female L. variolus I caught last summer laid about five in my care before passing on and I dutifully hatched all of them out. I allowed them to cannibalise and killed any males that appeared. This Darwinian approach netted me three nice juvenile females of which two died for unknown causes but the third is thriving and getting quite some size on her.

Just like with Ts, it can be kind of neat to look at an adult and think you raised it from a spiderling

 

[genious_gr]

Why did you kill the males???

 

[Code Monkey]

Why would I keep them and allow for inbreeding is a better question?

I had hundreds of widow slings that I allowed to cannibalise down to 3 juvenile females and you're concerned about what I did to a couple of males that grew large enough to identify.

 

[genious_gr]

You could just keep them, or sell them or give them to someone who would like a male for his/her female....you could even let them free!!!!

Anyway...

 

[Code Monkey]

Originally posted by genious_gr
You could just keep them, or sell them or give them to someone who would like a male for his/her female....you could even let them free!!!!

Um, no.

1) They're not native to where I live, at least not that I've ever seen confirmed. Releasing a foreign species deliberately should be punished very severely in my opinion.
That it was the middle of winter pretty much made this issue academic anyhow.

2) Had absolutely no desire to keep more than I did, nor was I looking to get into swapping widows for breeding stock. Most people who keep widows just go out and capture females from the wild.
I captured the mother myself for the curiosity of raising a captive widow, the eggsacs were a nice bonus, but that's all.

3) It's absolutely none of your business what I or anyone else does with their inverts. The objective reality is that these are just "bugs" and allowing siblings to eat one another until only the strongest survive and culling out any undesired ones is not cruel or unusual.

 

[pategirl]

I'll probably end up releasing a lot of the spiderlings after they hatch. They are native to the area(L. Mactans), and a few more in the wild won't hurt anything. I don't know of many people who would want to buy baby widows...but then again, when I started into arachnids, I didn't know of many who kept adults either. Hopefully I'll have a little while to decide.

 

[Code Monkey]

Originally posted by pategirl
I'll probably end up releasing a lot of the spiderlings after they hatch. They are native to the area(L. Mactans), and a few more in the wild won't hurt anything.

By all means if they're native and it hadn't been winter, I would have done the same. Widows are an important spider out there, that's why they're so common in a lot of areas.

If you search this particular forum for widows I know there were some good rearing tips given to me.

 

[genious_gr]

Originally posted by Code Monkey
It's absolutely none of your business what I or anyone else does with their inverts

That's exactly why I put that anyway at the end of my last post, I didn't mean to accuse you....I just thought it was a waste of healthy spiders....

 

[Mister Internet]

Originally posted by Code Monkey
3) It's absolutely none of your business what I or anyone else does with their inverts. The objective reality is that these are just "bugs" and allowing siblings to eat one another until only the strongest survive and culling out any undesired ones is not cruel or unusual.

Ahhh, that's the Chip I know and love... thanks for getting back to stuff we agree on...