Today in the Spider Room?

[Hydrazine]

Helga stubbornly refuses to flop on her back. I think it's been a week or so.

 

[Rigor Mortis]

It's been forever since I've posted on here but..........drumroll.....

The room full of adult/subadult NW terrestrials has done nothing. And that's how we like it over here.

 

[CrazyOrnithoctonineGuy]

Fed my growing (in two senses of the term) collection of sling and juvenile Ts and got one of the few shots of them actually eating:

Return to Gluttony

• CrazyOrnithoctonineGuy
• Apr 25, 2023
• eating feeding ornithoctoninae

This is the same juvenile I've posted re: ventral sexing. It has gotten rid of much of the...

I really need to start filming the takedowns from my genic sling....

 

[IntermittentSygnal]

Not today, but last Sunday, I rehoused my wee H pulchripes with a crankiness condition. It went horridly..for her, not me. No damages other than stress and frustration, and I'm happy to say she's almost completed her turret in the new enclosure and sits atop it (although still scrunched). A happy surprise while deconstructing her old enclosure (and it was nice to not have to deal with gloves), I found a tiny molt webbed to the underside of her hide. I though she had molted a month or so after her arrival, but wasn't 100% sure with no evidence and her not putting on much size.

 

[IntermittentSygnal]

At 3 days, Her Crankiness is hanging out like a boss in her new digs. Fascinates me how she built her turret to make a near perfect circle with the curve in the branch of wood there, even though that hole is much larger than her.
I couldn’t get all the reflections (those funky, black lines) out of the 2nd pic that shows the shape of her turret.

 

[CrazyOrnithoctonineGuy]

Rehoused my Chilobrachys sp. "Electric Blue" sling now that it's had its first post-molt meal to an enclosure with deep sub, so that hopefully it would use the starter burrow and not web up the lid.

What do you know, not even six hours later and it's decided to web up the lid and create a web tunnel for itself, completely ignoring the starter burrow.

 

[l4nsky]

Well, guess I'm doing something right.... Now I have a big female Psalmopoeus pulcher on a phantom eggsack in addition to the big P. regalis on one in a bioactive enclosure. Probably need to address both this weekend ....

 

[l4nsky]

Tarantula arts and crafts lol. These foam rocks are part of my continuing experiments with keeping fossorials in ways that encourage them to be visible at the front of the enclosure.

@AphonopelmaTX, a little more effort then floral foam, but I'm hoping they'll serve the same purpose .

 

[IntermittentSygnal]

Rehoused my Chilobrachys sp. "Electric Blue" sling now that it's had its first post-molt meal to an enclosure with deep sub, so that hopefully it would use the starter burrow and not web up the lid.

What do you know, not even six hours later and it's decided to web up the lid and create a web tunnel for itself, completely ignoring the starter burrow.

I feel your frustration! When I rehoused my 3” GBB, I gave him a sweet hide and plenty of anchor points to connect to the ground. He immediately connected one of those points to the lid and then molted in the web tunnel he made there.

 

[Shinn]

Fed the stray spider again.

 

[l4nsky]

I'm about 95% sure the massive 7"+ DLS P. regalis I've had in a bioactive for 4 or 5 years is sitting on a phantom eggsack. I needed to tear down that tank anyway and redo it, but I REALLY didn't think I'd have to deal with her on an eggsack while doing it. That should be fun to deal with, trying to get an eggsack from her in a burrow that goes through a pothos root ball .

Well, I got lucky and she tossed the phantom eggsack in her water bowl today. She was promptly rewarded with a male dubia that she quickly pounced on. Guess the bioactive tear down can be postponed a few more months now if necessary lol.

In other news, I got really unlucky as I'm doubting this eggsack being held by a WC 0.1 Hysterocrates sp Niger Delta is a phantom .

I REALLY didn't want to deal with an eggsack over the summer......

 

[campj]

Well, I got lucky and she tossed the phantom eggsack in her water bowl today. She was promptly rewarded with a male dubia that she quickly pounced on. Guess the bioactive tear down can be postponed a few more months now if necessary lol.

In other news, I got really unlucky as I'm doubting this eggsack being held by a WC 0.1 Hysterocrates sp Niger Delta is a phantom .
View attachment 444313
I REALLY didn't want to deal with an eggsack over the summer......

I'll take a few off your hands (as will every other greedy spider hoarder on this site)

I was just watering some spiders and caught my female P murinus "kigoma" off guard... I wasn't even aware that OBTs could stridulate, but she definitely gave one long protracted hiss followed by one short one. Looked it up, and sure enough they can stridulate!

 

[TribbleWhisperer]

P. metallica sling refused to use the hide, burrow, or web up anywhere in a deli cup for two weeks. Only ate once, hung out on the lid 24/7. The taller deli option is also bigger all around, but we moved him 2 days ago because he wouldn't settle anywhere. I just needed one more molt from the other arboreals to move them into waiting larger enclosures and he'd have an acrylic house but noooooooo

Sidenote: it's unsexed but I keep calling it 'him' because my husband named him Marshall already for Marshall Faulk. P. metallica coloration exists to rep his team in his mind lol

Anyway! Today Marshall has webbed a corner up high and took a pre killed tiny mealworm. Success!

 

[Rigor Mortis]

Had to go down to the storm shelter today due to a system of tornadoes in the area. All's well, but I did lug more than half the collection down there. Got hairs kicked at me by 2 of the Brachys, my N. chromatus charged to the front of her enclosure the moment I picked it up, A. chalcodes acted like it was the end of days, usual stuff. Nothing ended up happening and everyone got to go back to their usual spots.

 

[CrazyOrnithoctonineGuy]

Good and bad news today.

The good news is that the crown jewel of my collection, Anihan (a SAF Ornithoctoninae sp. "Haribon" and my only sexed & named T), has become incredibly active and bold overnight (for an Asian arboreal), to the point of extensively remodeling her hide in plain view (up to and including opening up the initial, much more visible entrance that she'd abandoned for months, laying down significant amounts of webbing around her current man entrance, and even biting pieces out of the small cork half round to increase internal space) and showing an incredible feeding response towards adult bimaculatus crickets (added 4 to the enclosure today, one has already been devoured and she's made attempts to catch the others).

Palace Reconstruction In Progress

• CrazyOrnithoctonineGuy
• May 12, 2023
• ornithoctoninae saf

All of my Ts have been becoming significantly more active with the warmer weather, but Anihan's...

The bad news is that I've had my first loss in my collection: my 2nd instar C. versi sling. The enclosure was a small vial that was cross-ventilated both top and bottom (with 16 and 8 ventilation holes respectively), so I feel stagnation can be excluded as the cause (or at least as the main cause); I suspect dehydration or even starvation based on the fact I've never seen this sling eat any of the feeders I've left for it (both live pinheads and pre-killed pinheads) or drink from the water droplets left on its webbing, and the fact I've been concerned about how thin it was becoming for the past few days as a result.

 

[Chris73G]

Today was the first time i actually had to remove some tarantula webbing because my genic partially attached her molting mat to the opening door of the enclosure so i would lift the whole ground when opening the enclosure. I thought i could just rip it off with tongs, but actually ended up cutting it with scissors because it was so thick and stubborn. Impressive stuff, those webbings...

 

[jennywallace]

Rehoused my juvie G. pulchra and T. stirmi this afternoon. Two very easy rehousings, neither T was bothered, just wandered into their new enclosures.

 

[spideyspinneret78]

Roxy (0.1 N. tripepii) doing some burrow construction early this morning.

 

[ladyratri]

First sighting of my versicolor's toes since it retreated into its web tube a couple months ago.

Fresh from a molt on or before 5/1 (I suspect that day is actually when it kicked out the trash)



The iridescent foot pads

 

[TribbleWhisperer]

Saw our P. vittata for the first time in forever. It did NOT want to eat and threw itself over the enclosure edge to escape the insult of food, the audacity! It went back in very nicely with a light paintbrush touch, and I didn't leak any pee when it bolted initially: success!

I can't believe it fit in a 2oz deli cup with room to explore and molt as recently as December. I took some pics since I hadn't seen it in weeks, it's so pretty