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An Improved Method of Artificial Incubation By Ray Gabriel

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  • An Improved Method of Artificial Incubation By Ray Gabriel

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    An Improved Method of Artificial Incubation
    By Ray Gabriel
    My last article on artificial incubation (Gabriel 2004) was dedicated to an eaten egg-sac of Poecilotheria smithi. This article is dedicated to the same egg-sac, had I been confident enough to remove it earlier than 21 days it may not have been eaten. We have found that with this new incubator, egg-sacs can be removed much earlier, from 8–10 days, with nearly 100% success.

    From experience, this new style of incubator does not work well with egg-sacs from terrestrial Asian spiders removed before 21 days. For Asian species I would still recommend either waiting 3 weeks and/or using the old style incubator mentioned in my previous article.

    The main incubator is a small Pet-Pal, not the mini but the size up from that. The Pet-Pal’s ventilated lid it taped-up using parcel tape (as described in my previous article).

    Inside the Pet-Pal I use a small plastic Tupperware-style box. I cut the central portion out of its lid, so that I’m left with the lid rim only. I then pour about 1 cm of water into the base of the plastic box and stretch a section of voil (net curtain) over the top, engaging the lid rim to hold it taught, like the skin of a drum (Fig. 1).
    I place the Tuppaware/voil box within the Pet-Pal and close its lid. The whole unit is then microwaved for 1 minute and 20 seconds (to partially sterilise the unit) and allowed to cool. I then place folded absorbent kitchen-paper in the base of the Pet-Pal and rest the Tupperware/voil box on top of this layer (this mops-up excess condensation and prevents mobile Nymph-2s from drowning). Empty the egg-sac contents (eggs or nymphs) onto the voil; if any are stuck to the sac remove any dirt from the outside of the sac and place the sac on the voil too. Ensure the eggs are spread out in a single layer (two incubators may be required for large batches of young).

    Place two joined sheets of kitchen paper between the Pet-Pal and its lid (as in the previous article). Label the incubator, so you know which species is being incubated, and return it to the same spot where the mother’s tanks was originally
    (to maintain the same temperature).
    The theory behind this new incubator
    As we all know (with the exception of species with fixed egg-sacs) female tarantulas roll their egg-sacs while they carrying them – but why? The most common theory is that this prevents compaction of the eggs. In the incubator, all the eggs are held in a single layer on the voil, thereby minimising any pressure from adjacent eggs.

    I suspect (contrary to what the books say) that in the first few days some fertilisation occurs within the egg-sac itself (another reason why the female rotates and massages the egg-sac – ensuring the sperm is equally spread). This would help explain why egg-sac which have been removed for incubation early, often don’t succeed. From experience it would appear that 8– 10 days is the safest age to remove an egg-sac for incubation (a great improvement on the 3-weeks suggested previously). Even if most of the eggs are bad or unfertilised, removing the egg-sac at this stage prevents the female eating it, thereby giving the breeder the opportunity to rear those eggs which are viable.

    I suspect females can sense the movement of the young within the egg-sac; if this cue is absent then they eat the egg-sac. I have no proof of this, but it makes sense – why waste the nutritional value of an egg-sac which would fail anyway? Artificial incubation allows the breeder to discarded bad eggs which, within an egg-sac, would facilitate fungal or bacterial growth (potentially killing adjacent, otherwise healthy eggs).

    I have been successfully using this method of incubation since October 2003 (the exception being for terrestrial Asian species). I am unsure why terrestrial Asian sacs do not work well in this set-up, perhaps humidity levels are not correct for these species?

    Andy Matthews first tried this new incubation technique with an egg-sac from a wild caught Acanthoscurria sp. from Paraguay. He incubated the sac from 8- days-old and had almost 100% success (just a couple of bad eggs out of a few hundred). I attempted incubation of an Acanthoscurria antillensis egg-sac from day 1, but only managed to rear 7 viable spiderlings out of a total of about 600 eggs. This is the main reason why I think that some fertilisation occurs within the eggsac during the first few days (rather than the eggs being fertilised as they are laid). Acknowledgements

    I would like to thank Richard Gallon for the 90 minute phone call where we discussed the early stages of the design of this incubator, and Andy Matthews for being the first to attempt using this incubator. Without the input and feedback from Richard and Andy this incubator would not have been developed.
    Reference
    Gabriel, R. 2004: Artificial incubation and the care of nymphs. Journal of the British Tarantula Society , 19 (2): 38 41.

    • Ruan Lambrechts
      #1
      Ruan Lambrechts commented
      Editing a comment
      When I try and see the attachment, it gives me an error message saying invalid attachment, please contact administrator.

    • Mark Pennell
      #2
      Mark Pennell commented
      Editing a comment
      Originally posted by Ruan Lambrechts
      When I try and see the attachment, it gives me an error message saying invalid attachment, please contact administrator.

      you must be logged in to see attachments this could be the issue

      Admin

    • martin hudson
      #3
      martin hudson commented
      Editing a comment
      Great style incubator, i used this exact type just recently to raise a pterinochilus murinus sac,from EwL's,
      couldn't have gone any better,..
    Posting comments is disabled.

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  • An Improved Method of Artificial Incubation By Ray Gabriel
    by Mark Pennell

    An Improved Method of Artificial Incubation
    By Ray Gabriel
    My last article on artificial incubation (Gabriel 2004) was dedicated to an eaten egg-sac of Poecilotheria smithi. This article is dedicated to the same egg-sac, had I been confident enough to remove it earlier than 21 days it may not have been eaten. We have found that with this new incubator, egg-sacs can be removed much earlier, from 8–10 days, with nearly 100% success. From experience, this new style of incubator does...
    28-08-12, 08:51 PM
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