Feeding very small slings

[Stuart Baker]

I got myself 80 1st instar B. vagans slings from the show on Sunday, and I would really like to find a food source that's a bit easier to handle than fruit flies or micro crickets, as manipulating 80 of thses is going to be time consuming to say the least. If anyone has any ideas I'd love to hear them

Stuart

[Richard Gallon]

Use frozen crickets. Then thaw the amount you need for each feeding session. Drop a thawed cricket in with each spiderling and it will eat it. Just make sure you remove the remains quickly as mould can rapidly spread from an uneaten cricket in a film tub and engulf the spiderling.

Also keep the frozen crickets in a sealed container to prevent them drying out during storage.

Cheers,
Richard

[Mikhail F. Bagaturov]

He-he Stewart
Never saw such tiny slings before? These are not so giant as any Pamph
Being serious You can feed em anything from the parts of cut mealworms to the pieces of meat or mosquito grub (don't know the english name?).
Good luck!

[Stuart Baker]

Thanks for that Richard. That should keep them going until they're big enough to take maggots.

Mikhail - in the past I've used fruit flies for smaller slings. That's Ok for eight or even eighteen, but eighty would just take too long. The last lot of slings I had were T. apophysis, and they were huge!

[Colin D Wilson]

Stuart there's a small maggot (perfect sling size) that are available in fishing tackle shops (you may have to order them though) they're called "Squats".
they're not coloured or anything (like pinkies are) and kept in the fridge will last for weeks (with 80 mouths to feed they wont last that long anyway eh mate)

[Stuart Baker]

Stuart there's a small maggot (perfect sling size) that are available in fishing tackle shops (you may have to order them though) they're called "Squats".
they're not coloured or anything (like pinkies are) and kept in the fridge will last for weeks (with 80 mouths to feed they wont last that long anyway eh mate)

That was my first thought, but I'm having trouble getting hold of them. The guy in the shop said that he only gets them in in the Autumn/winter and that pinkie maggots were the same size anyway? The pinkies are too big. As I've never been fishing in my life I have no idea if this info is correct. It's a bit annoying as I phoned the shop before I bought the slings, and was told that squats were always available

[Colin D Wilson]

Worked as a favour to a friend most of last year in a tackle shop and squats are definity smaller than the pinkies i used to order, squats were available all year round too.
i wouldn't use pinkies as they contain colouring and i'm not sure if this could pose a problem.

[mike halewood]

If you get white pinkies theres no colouring. Maggots turn into blue bottle and pinkies turn into green bottles. The small slings I've had in the past I just fed either frozen crickets or parts of crickets!!! although I wouldnt fancy the task of pulling the legs off 40 crickets!! lol

Mike

[stuart edwards]

anybody know much about pheonix worms as i was advised that they where good to use to.

[Nicola Dolby]

Food

The maggots I use are about 0.5cm long, I don't know if they are squat maggots as you say though. The thing is I have to kill them first as the spiderlings are too small to do so. I remember one tiny maggot crawling up to this P. metallica spiderling I had and banging it on the nose once, the poor spider ran off!!

[Colin D Wilson]

These Phoenix worms / larvae hit the reptile hobby about ten years ago with a big bang, they were hailed as the best thing since sliced bread as they were hugely high in calcium and vitamins, they were often recommended for reptiles that were recovering from illness and operations etc.
arachnids will eat them just as any other food item and at the last report there's no real advantage to feeding these as arachnids process vitamins and minerals differently to reptiles and amphibians.

not seen them around much lately, but i'm sure they would add a variation to a T's diet.

Two humorous things about the reptile scenario was that after the sick reptile had recovered (with the help of the phoenix worm nutrients) the owners discovered that the reptile would take nothing else because it had been "spoilt" (same as wax worms) this led to an expensive diet.

secondly naive Iguana owners heard of this miracle foodstuff and fed their pets these in great amounts along with their normal food as calcium deficiency is one thing you don't want, the iguanas became very ill, some just died, the "completely vegetarian" iguana's digestive system just cannot process more than a minute portion of animal based foodstuff, kidney's, liver all shut down in a very short time.