Sunday, May 31, 2009

NO HR 669

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Wednesday, May 27, 2009

More Molts

Well all my little T's have been very busy molting, some for the first time in my care, some on their second molts in my care. Here's a run down of who molted and when they molted.

5/16 P. irminia molted. It went from about .75" to maybe 1.5" hard to tell with all it's webbing.

5/19 The long awaited molt of my A. avic, she finally molted after about 2 1/2 months of being in premolt. I wasn't able to confirm her being female because she destroyed the important part of the molt and I was unable to tell, but she has no palps and still looking female. I just gave her a cricket for the first time yesterday and she jumped on it and very much enjoyed it.

5/20 LP molted. Looks to be about 1" now and looking a bit more pink. I also fed her for the first time last night, she, well I don't know if it's a she or not, but it will now need to be rehoused as it's out grown it's vial.

5/22 German blue fang #2 molted. It lost one of it's legs in the molt, a back leg and seems to be doing fine.

5/22 B. Vagans #1 molted. Has really grown in size, this time, this is the second molt in my care. Now I can see red hairs sticking out of the abdomen.

5/24 German blue fang #3 molted. It did regenerate it's lost leg, but not it's palp. I'm thinking it lost the palp after the leg and will need another molt to replace this. The new leg looked white and smaller then the rest of it's legs for a couple days, but now has gotten some color in it.

5/27 A.versicolor #1 molted. Looks to be maybe 1.5" now.



I also had two deaths. 5/19 C. elegans. I love this little one and have no clue what happened, Ate two days before the molt and was eating well for the couple weeks I had it.

Also on 5/20 A. versicolor #2 was found dead. Again another unexplained death, both only took a couple meals after they molted before they stopped eating again. I think it may have had propblems molting or something because last time #2 molted before #1 and this may have been the case, since #1 just molted.

Isopod Study with B. vagans

I decided to take six of the B. vagans slings I got in and see how they did with isopods before adding them to all of my T's. The slings are less then half a inch in size. I started this project on 5/20. I labeled each vial I1-I6, the I standing for Isopod. I fed all T's the day before the isopods were introduced, but wasn't sure if they all ate or not, but added them in any ways. Here are my observations so far....


5/20 added 1 baby isopod to each vial with the B.vagans slings.

5/21 Slings in vials I5 and I3 ate the isopods over night. I'm not sure if they ate any of the meal worm I offered the night before. I decided to feed the slings again in 2 days and would add isopods back to the enclosures.

5/24 All isopods still alive, fed slings last night. Will reintroduce isopods to slings I3 and I5.

5/25 Reintroduced isopods. Both I3 and I5 ate them again. The rest of the isopods are still alive. I decided to try several with my Asian scorpion, and several were found dead in the water dish, several were dead on the bottom of the enclosure, and there were about 6 still alive moving around.

5/26 Found the sling in I1 dead, wasn't sure if it was really dead so I put it in ICU and it hasn't moved since yesterday. Death wasn't caused by the isopod, it hadden't even tried to feed on the dead body yet. Will continue study with the rest of the slings.

Monday, May 18, 2009

You've Got Mail

Well I've been a busy little bee placing orders today. I have placed 2 orders with different people and they will both arrive on Tuesday!

Coming from Paulatpetshop (user name on AB) is the following...


3 European imported blue fang slings
25 B vagans slings (1/2")
1 B vagans (1.5") freebie with order over $50.00


Paul has been excellent to do business with so far and the slings aren't even on their way yet. I wanted to do a communal with the vagans, but turns out it will just turn out to be a bunch of death, so that idea has been aborted. So I asked him if he had any H incei or H villosella. Turns out he didn't have them, but said he would get them in soon, I asked how soon because I was going to try and save on shipping. He checked his list and while I was sending payment for the above, he was e-mailing his contacts about importing one or both species for me! How excellent is that? Now that's what I talk about service. Paul tells me that they should be here in a couple weeks, depending on how much import paper work needs to be done ect.



Package two will be arriving on Tuesday as well, coming from miarachnids also from AB. Coming from him are...


4 H villosella slings for a communal project I'd like to do.

PM'ed him EARLY this am, and when I checked this afternoon he had e-mailed me back saying he had 4 left. So I told him I would take them and just needed a shipping price, and he sent that this evening and I sent out payment, He said he would have them packed and sending them out tomorrow morning(Monday).


Also possibly coming in on Tuesday HOPEFULLY will be the following


3 female A genetics
1 male A genetic
1 female OBT
1 female P. irminia
1000-2000 roaches.

they will be coming from massmorels of tarantulas.us.

I talked to him last weekend, and he was still waiting on my second half of my payment to clear, first part did with no props, never heard back on weather the second one did or not. He said it should clear in a few days, and he would ship after this past weekend on Monday. I sent a e-mail to see if payment had cleared and if he still planned on shipping on Monday, didn't hear anything back, then went to send another PM today (Sunday) to make sure and re-read his last PM and he said he was working all this week, so hoping that's why he didn't get back to me. Sent another one anyways asking again if he was still planning on shipping them out on Monday.


So if all 3 boxes come in on Tuesday, I'm gonna be over loaded for awhile, so If you don't hear from me in awhile, I could be all webbed over so send help lol.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Yet Another Molt!

Well yesterday when I went to go and check on all the kids I noticed the my P. irminia finally molted!. It had been refusing food for about 2 weeks now and finally popped. I'm not quite sure how big it was because when I got it, it was had already been living in it's vial for some time and had made a burrow kinda like structure on the ground and filled the rest of the vial with webbing, and make 6-8 tubes from the top of the vial down to the ground. But I'm guessing it was maybe 3/4" and now it surely grew A LOT in size, I'm guessing it to be around 1.5-1.75".

I'm still waiting on my A. avic to molt, it hasn't moved out of it's webbing at all, but I have seen it turn around and is always on one side of the webbing. Last night I was thinking maybe it was expecting it's prey to walk into the tube ends on the web, So I took a tiny roach and put it in the end tube that the T was facing, and it ran right by her and the T was not intrested, it went into the corner and then ran under the T again, out the other end of the webbing, so I took it out and fed it to someone else. This poor thing is making me really nervous. It hasn't eaten anything in 2 months now and was eating 1-2x per week. Both temps and humidity are in the 80's and I've even tried raising temps during the day for a few days with no luck. Maybe it's taking so long because it's quite possiably will be it's mature molt? Seems to be 3" or so now. I hope she molted soon.

Also still waiting on my penultimate rosea to molt. Hasn't eaten in about a month, so I'm not sure if it's in pre molt, or just being a rosea. It's abdomen doesn't appear to be getting any darker to me. Once he molts, and has been given a week or so to harden up, and gets a couple meals in him, he'll be sent out on a breeding loan to hopefully make some babies, as I only have one female, and she is already gravid. Although if my MM dies, and the female has her sac before this guy molts, then I'll keep him around long enough to breed with my female again and then send him out on a loan.

I also think that two of the German import blue fangs I got in are going to molt soon because they haven't eaten in a just over a week now either. I hope they both do as they are so tiny, and one of them is missing a leg and a palp.

On a ending note, I've been thinking about doing a communal project for while now and I've been looking at H incei and H villosella. But I just found someone with real cheap B vagans and I'm researching now to see if anyone has done a communal project with them before, or if it would just end in a bunch of death. So I'll keep you updated on that, and may even make a special blog just for the communal project.

Friday, May 15, 2009

Don't know what happened below

Well I have no idea why my pics came out like they did in the post below, but on the up side, you can click on the pictures and you can see the enlarged picture clearly. So I guess I still have some more work to do on these pictures, Wish I knew what I was doing wrong, but I gotta check on my T's and head off to bed. So I'll have to mess with this some more another time.

Some more pics

Well I'm determined to get this picture thing working now. So here I am again trying it out.

Hopefully here are a couple pics of my MM rosea I found making a new sperm web.


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Also here is something that is for sure blog worthy. I tried to feed my LP a roach, and last time it refused it and didn't eat it. She doesn't look to be in pre molt or anything, but this time I saw her bite the roach but she didn't eat it and here is what I found the next morning, they aren't the best pics, but if you save them and zoom in on your computer you can really see the coloring...


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And lastly here are some pics of one of the Blue Fangs I picked up. This T is recent off a molt and I dropped in the roach and it ran out the vial into my lap and I got it on my hand it it started walking around real calm, so decided to snap a few quick pictures.


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Hope these pictures worked this time and hope you enjoyed!

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Couple pics

Decided to finally test the code I was given from the owner of The Spiderling Project so my pics wont mess up my blog and you can just click on them for the enlarged version.

Ok so here we go testing this out, hopefully will be two pics of my gravid rosea, she's gotten real big. These pics are also about 2 weeks or more old.

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Also as a little teaser, here is one of my OBT's mating with insert, although you can't see the actual insert, trust me it happened, I had a better view lol.

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EDIT: Well that didn't exactly work as planned, you can't click on them to enlarge them, dunno why, copied the code down correctly, I'll have to play with it more, but for now I think I got them to a decent size instead of a tiny little thumbnail.

More T's coming soon

Well I was hoping to have a bunch more T's at the start of this week, but apparently it's taking longer then normal for my paypal payment to clear. So hopefully by the end of this week the payment clears, which it should, the first half already did, I made a deposit and then paid the rest in full a couple days later. So here's what I'll be getting....


3" P.irmina female
3 -2.5" A.geniculata females
2.5" A.geniculata male
4.5" P.murinus female
1000-2000 dubia roach colony
.75" B.vagans freebie

All for a complete steal of $200 shipped. I can't wait to get the OBT female in, I'll have to ask, but I hope she is on the fresh side of a molt because I'd like to pair her with my MM while he is still around. I did breed him to my other OBT female who I've named kitten and she has been doing well. She was eating everything offered to her, and last night I noticed her out and roaming around. I figured she was hungry since I hadden't fed her in 2 days. But I was too tired when I got home and fell asleep before I did. When I woke up she was still out and roaming around her enclosure. So I offered her a roach and she didn't have any intrest in it. So I squished it's head and placed it on her web for a snack for later. So hopefully in about 25-30 days I'll have a nice big sac of OBT eggs. WISH ME LUCK!!!

Fed all my slings but my 3 BF imports because I fed them two days ago and pretty much including the original 3 BF's took down their roaches. The LP sling didn't eat this time or last time I fed, but may have eaten it since, Also the irminia didn't eat and neither did the vagans, the irminia didn't eat last time either. The vagans recently molted so it can't be premolt, and the LP doesn't look to be in premolt and I can't really tell about the iriminia because of all the webbing it's done.

Also walked in on my MM rosea going strong and making another sperm web. I've decided not to loan him out because he's such a good looking T and don't want him to end up some evil females dinner. So hopefully my female will drop her sac soon,(she's HUGE and eating like a cow) and he can have another go with her. My penultimate male rosea I think may be in premolt, hasn't eaten in the last several times I offered food. Or just a rosea being a rosea and going off food for awhile. I hope it is getting ready to molt, I'll be looking to send him out after he hardens.

Well just wanted to post a quick update, gotta go check on the T's and then off to bed.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

It's Been A Month

Wow has it really been a month since my last post here? It doesn't seem like it's been that long. I've been getting in New T's left and right. Current count is 21 I think.

Here's the list(don't think I forgot anyone)

1 MM OBT
1 MF OBT
2 OBT slings
1 A. avic sling
1 MF thai tiger sp.
1 MM rosea
1 penultimate male rosea
1 MF rosea
1 C. fasciatum sling
1 B. vagans sling
1 P. Irmina sling
6 blue fang slings
1 C. elegans
2 A. versicolor slings

I just got 3 of the blue fangs in(yesterday), they are of German import. They were sold as .5" but when I got them one must have molted because it is 1" and the other two still need to molt as they are .5" which I hope they do so soon because I've been told by breeders that they can be tricky to care for/keep alive until they get to that 1" mark. Also the TINY tiny one came missing a palp and leg I on the right side. So hoping it lost it awhile ago and will come back with this next molt and not have to wait for another. But it is eating, took it awhile to pick up the roach I fed it, squished the head so it wouldn't burrow and still move for the little thing. Also got the C elegans in with the Germans and it's .75" and really amazing, took down a crix the same size as it before it even hit the bottom of the vial.

So far everyone has molted for me, except for my two MM's and my penultimate male, the 3 new Bluefangs, the elegans, and the irmina all in like a months time. I mated my OBT's and just like my rosea she molted the day after being bred for the first time. So she's had 2 weeks to harden up and feed, and she's been going on dates again since the 2nd. She has had a total of 4 successful dates and now I'm waiting to see if she's going to fatten up and lay a sac. Still waiting on the rosea to lay her sac, she's just been getting bigger and bigger, but they take their sweet time and I'm sure I'll be waiting well after the OBT has her sac.

I did have a 2" blue fang sold to me as a female as my 1st one and I had it for about 1.5 weeks and it was feeding fine, and I saw it out of it's burrow nightly, I saw it on top one night, and then not for 3 days, I wasn't worried about it or anything and on the 3rd day when I went to feed it, I noticed the smell of death, I dug it out and it was surely dead. I took it to a blue fang breeder, and they said it was infact a male, and it had mites, but wasn't sure what caused the death. We both kinda came to the conclusion that it was a combination of stress from shipping and the mites. I also got a female cobalt blue, she was about 4-4.5" and I had her for about a week I think and she attempted to molt. She was just starting to get her legs out when she got stuck. I tried to help her out, but her two stuck legs (Leg II on both sides) were really bad, One wasn't even fully formed. It was totally weird and a good learning experience for me on how to cut one out of it's molt. Also it's side ruptured and started to bleed, and I was able to stop that with some crazy glue. But she ended up dying before I was able to fully free her, I think she lost too much blood before I noticed and was able to stop it.

Well I guess that's a pretty good update for now, I'm off to watch the T's.