dmattenski
Arachnopeon
- Joined
- Feb 27, 2017
- Messages
- 17
Hi, I posted this under DKS??? but it was suggested I post here. In addition to my thoughts below, I'd appreciate any suggestions regarding what to discard and how to clean supplies for when I do get another. Thanks.
Got my first T for 2016 Christmas from my family, a beautiful Chilean red zebra ....just lost her overnight to DKS. I watched her suffer for 3 days, tried several of the ICU recommendations, I'm stunned. Over the last few days I read everything out on the internet about this....nothing makes sense. My husband and I are both scientists - and though a lot of you on this are the experts on T's - we thought we would offer our analytical minds to sift through the anecdotal reports looking for commonalities. Overwhelmingly, folks say pesticides, but there seem to be way too many exceptions to this, including ours, where there are no pesticides in the house. Also a lot of folks with colonies of Ts, yet only one or two die, even though theoretically all would have been similarly exposed. Other chemicals? In my case, I wasn't yet handling her, so other chemicals are not a factor. Other factors? Genetic? then why does it hit every species? It would have to be a mutation that occurred long ago, in an early lineage giving rise to the Theraphosidae, in order for it to show up in so many species...statistically not possible to be a coincidence. Dehydration? Seems to be a chicken/egg thing. Food source? Again, prey types and sources are too diverse (from all over the country) to be the source. So, no matter what the thought, there doesn't seem to be a statistically valid common cause. I haven't seen anything on substrate, I was using eco-earth, but again, I think there will be lots of variation. (BTW I put the wrong species on my previous thread). Thanks all.
Got my first T for 2016 Christmas from my family, a beautiful Chilean red zebra ....just lost her overnight to DKS. I watched her suffer for 3 days, tried several of the ICU recommendations, I'm stunned. Over the last few days I read everything out on the internet about this....nothing makes sense. My husband and I are both scientists - and though a lot of you on this are the experts on T's - we thought we would offer our analytical minds to sift through the anecdotal reports looking for commonalities. Overwhelmingly, folks say pesticides, but there seem to be way too many exceptions to this, including ours, where there are no pesticides in the house. Also a lot of folks with colonies of Ts, yet only one or two die, even though theoretically all would have been similarly exposed. Other chemicals? In my case, I wasn't yet handling her, so other chemicals are not a factor. Other factors? Genetic? then why does it hit every species? It would have to be a mutation that occurred long ago, in an early lineage giving rise to the Theraphosidae, in order for it to show up in so many species...statistically not possible to be a coincidence. Dehydration? Seems to be a chicken/egg thing. Food source? Again, prey types and sources are too diverse (from all over the country) to be the source. So, no matter what the thought, there doesn't seem to be a statistically valid common cause. I haven't seen anything on substrate, I was using eco-earth, but again, I think there will be lots of variation. (BTW I put the wrong species on my previous thread). Thanks all.