Ice Cube!!!

[Richard Shah]

Hey all!
I finally got Ice Cube, but I have a few concerns and wonder if they should be disregarded or not.
The T. is listed as juvenile with a legspan of 3cm - I was pretty sure this was just a mistake and that it should be 6cm, however, it is just under three centimetres legspan - probably naive of me, but I asked Andrew and he said his was 3cm, not inc. the legspan and judging by his pics, it is about 6.

Also, I placed my T. in there and it was visible for about ten - fifteen minutes, and now I cannot see it at all! In a tank of thirty centimetres and with it's current set-up, should I be worried??? There seems to be a little tunnel though where there is a path to walk from the ground area to the top of the wood bark; pic will come soon.

And it look's like I can either prekill the crickets or freeze them and get micro crickets - damn.

Cheers,

Rich!

[Andrew Ferguson]

Finally Richard, it's arrived!!

Remember B. smithi are a burrowing tarantula and your set up will have deep enough substrate for it to dig. A young juvenile will feel more secure hidden well away. Almost all young of any creature tend to hide away, from the largest predators on the planet to some of the smallest fish in the oceans.

Let the tarantula settle in for a day or so. Then let in a cricket near to where Ice Cube (NWA fan by any chance?) is settled. The cricket will do more roaming than the tarantula.

By best advice, from one newbie to another is to be patient. You may not see it for a while and on other days it will be happy to parade around. My smithi spent ages in an underground burrow for ages, yet now seems to have settled inside a plastic plant. I'm sure it knows I would like a GBB and is trying to be semi arboreal to make me feel better. Especially after kicking nearly all its urticating hairs at me!!!

I hope this little bit of advice is of some help Richard.

And lets see those pics!!!!

[Richard Shah]

Finally Richard, it's arrived!!

Remember B. smithi are a burrowing tarantula and your set up will have deep enough substrate for it to dig. A young juvenile will feel more secure hidden well away. Almost all young of any creature tend to hide away, from the largest predators on the planet to some of the smallest fish in the oceans.

Let the tarantula settle in for a day or so. Then let in a cricket near to where Ice Cube (NWA fan by any chance?) is settled. The cricket will do more roaming than the tarantula.

By best advice, from one newbie to another is to be patient. You may not see it for a while and on other days it will be happy to parade around. My smithi spent ages in an underground burrow for ages, yet now seems to have settled inside a plastic plant. I'm sure it knows I would like a GBB and is trying to be semi arboreal to make me feel better. Especially after kicking nearly all its urticating hairs at me!!!

I hope this little bit of advice is of some help Richard.

And lets see those pics!!!!

Thanks lol - I keep thinking in the back of my mind "Has it escaped? How it could it have escaped?" Pics in a min, I took a few of the T. but came out blurry, I felt bad taking it cuz of the flash and the T's eight eyes!
Yeah I like NWA but I didn't really call it Ice Cube cuz of that - but someone on these forums mentioned their T. was called Ice Cube and I said I liked it, I'm gonna use it and I also like Ice Cube as a rapper and an actor!

Do you think I can give it a dead cricket right now and see what happens? Most of my crickets are way too big for this T.!!!

[Andrew Ferguson]

By all means try one out. As I'm sure you have read, that if it's not eaten within 24hrs, remove the cricket.

The occasional flash will not harm your tarantula (as read in S. Schultz's book). Look forward to seeing the little thing!

[Richard Shah]

By all means try one out. As I'm sure you have read, that if it's not eaten within 24hrs, remove the cricket.

The occasional flash will not harm your tarantula (as read in S. Schultz's book). Look forward to seeing the little thing!

I dunno man I just feel a little worried that it may have escaped, though I do not see how that is possible and I know I'm probz just worrying cuz it's a first time and everything.
Yeah I'll try it out and hopefully find a shell of it in the mroning, and then leave it over school time if it still hasn't been eaten, then when I return home I'll remove it, whole or not - I hope to God it is a shell though, so I know that the T. is in there!!
I def. look forward to seeing it, as should you; in the meantime, some blurred pics of it:




And a possible burrow it made, as I didn't notice the small between the two piece of woodbark when I put the T. in:



Thanks,

Rich

[Richard Shah]

I think I messed up just now cuz I just was so impatient I had to have a look under the second piece of cork bark, and sure enough, Ice Cube was there. So I tapped it to get it running so I could set the piece of bark back down again and it went legging it off to under the first piece of CB and into the deep, dep blackness. I then set the second piece back down properly on the top and sealed off all the gaps.
Did I do something wrong?

[Tom Forman]

Lol I knew that would happen.

I tried to warn you months ago.

...

Ah well,
you haven't done anything wrong except scare and stress him a little. But that is why you chose a smithy, they are hardy and he will handle it.
Just make sure you leave him be for now. Pretend your spider is coming in a weeks time (as if he were not there yet).
I know that will be hard to do since you have been waiting this long but you know it's for the best.
Till then disturb the tank as little as possible.

If you do this, Ice Cube will show himself once he feels at home.

The more you toy with him the longer it will take for him to be in full display I reckon.

Once he is out of hiding is when I would start feeding him but you can feed him now if you wish, I personally wouldn't. Maybe a dead cricket would be ok but a live one is going to scare him too much now.

I've had one of my slings go into hiding for a whole month. It can happen.

It's hard to tell from the picture but I reckon he looks good. Lets hope he starts showing himself sooner than later.

[Peter Roach]

In a tank of thirty centimetres

I wouldnt keep a T of 3inches in a tank of this size let alone one of 3 cm !!!
There is not wrong at all with your setup but I think your tank is waaayyyyy over sized for such a small spider.
My reasoning is that if the spider is kept in a small container then it can not but help find the crickets within seconds rather than it may find the cricket in a large tank such as yours .. but then again the cricket may not pass with in the inch or so needed for the spider to notice it. I keep my smithi's (average size 2.5 -3.5cm) in small round containers of 6cm across, they wont be moved into the larger sized 3in x3in x3in containers until they cover at least 3/4 of the containers they are in now.

B smithi in a film pot about to be rehoused into the tubs underneath.


New homes for B smithi's amongst a few others.

[Richard Shah]

I wouldnt keep a T of 3inches in a tank of this size let alone one of 3 cm !!!
There is not wrong at all with your setup but I think your tank is waaayyyyy over sized for such a small spider.
My reasoning is that if the spider is kept in a small container then it can not but help find the crickets within seconds rather than it may find the cricket in a large tank such as yours .. but then again the cricket may not pass with in the inch or so needed for the spider to notice it. I keep my smithi's (average size 2.5 -3.5cm) in small round containers of 6cm across, they wont be moved into the larger sized 3in x3in x3in containers until they cover at least 3/4 of the containers they are in now.

B smithi in a film pot about to be rehoused into the tubs underneath.


New homes for B smithi's amongst a few others.

I know, I know, but I think it is already settling in to its new home and also I dnt really have resources for another shelter; I want to trouble it as least as possible so I think I can leave it where it is, and also, it may imitate its natrual habitat if it is bigger so that when I put the cricket it, it'll wait for the next possible oppurtunity to get a cricket.
But I'm a newbie, so what does everyone else think???

Lol I knew that would happen.

I tried to warn you months ago.

...

Ah well,
you haven't done anything wrong except scare and stress him a little. But that is why you chose a smithy, they are hardy and he will handle it.
Just make sure you leave him be for now. Pretend your spider is coming in a weeks time (as if he were not there yet).
I know that will be hard to do since you have been waiting this long but you know it's for the best.
Till then disturb the tank as little as possible.

If you do this, Ice Cube will show himself once he feels at home.

The more you toy with him the longer it will take for him to be in full display I reckon.

Once he is out of hiding is when I would start feeding him but you can feed him now if you wish, I personally wouldn't. Maybe a dead cricket would be ok but a live one is going to scare him too much now.

I've had one of my slings go into hiding for a whole month. It can happen.

It's hard to tell from the picture but I reckon he looks good. Lets hope he starts showing himself sooner than later.

Lol; I'm not going to disturb him anymore. Also, cuz the tank is so big I dnt reckon it'll even find the dead cricket. However, when I get some proper sized locusts or crickets, I'll give it to the T live so that he can find it easier when it moves around.
Thanks for your advice mate, and I will take it.

Cheers,

Rich!

[Peter Lacey]

Rich, everyone's been giving you advice for the last few months that reflects what Peter Roach says above. Personally I think a larger tub than Peter suggests is fine (everyone has differences of opinion but Peter's been doing this far longer than I) but your 30x30x30 is way too big for such a small T. They are not the hunter we'd like to think they are, they tend to stay in one small spot and wait for the food to come to them.
Simple cure, and one I and many suggested a long time ago. Get some smaller tubs and put them inside your Exo-terra (or fish tank as it was before). You can get small tubs from most supermarkets etc quite easily and at very low cost - expect to pay less than a packet of crisps!

[matthew spooner]

hey rich, congrats on the new T first of all. i agree with all that has been said before, your tank is definitely too big. dont worry about unsettling the little fella, oh and nice name for him by the way, i wonder where you could have got it from (*cough* copy cat *cough*) lol. when i have jeuveniles, i re house them every so often so they are in the perfect size enclosure. ideally a tank should be atleast 2 and a half times the spiders leg span. i've got a couple of Ts about that size and i have made them little homes in cricket containers - perfect.

[Tom Forman]

As long as the T setup is not too bare, and there are plenty of decent hiding places the size of the tank can be as large as that.

Of course there are disadvantages.

one beeing that food could go unnoticed unless you drop the crcket directly infront of him and even then the cricket would just jump away. You'd expect your T to chase it? Think again, it would rather sit there and wait for the cricket to come back.

the second disadvantage is that you will never know where your T is hiding and generally the bigger the open space, the more hiding the T does.

I know you must be really confused now rich. Leave it in the tank it is in or move it into a smaller container? Well we are giving you information to help you decide. You might notice that your T is hiding too much for your liking and well the simplest solution is to use a little pot not much bigger than the T. It will give the T the feeling of beeing in some sort of "burrow" and it won't hide nearly as much...

Whatever you decide to do, still leave it be for a while, the journey in the post is enough stress for one week.

[Colin D Wilson]

I agree with Tom,
you've been patient enough over the last few weeks waiting for it so a few extra days shouldn't matter while you let it settle down a bit and you decide what to do about the enclosure.
You could try and work out a sort of division within the tank that could be moved back further as the spider grows.

Just to confuse matters a little more, i keep even the smallest sling in cricket tubs....But....i feed them prekilled for the first few moults, then i start with the live food. At 3 cm I, personally, would be contemplating moving them into a 8x6 inch hatchling box. They'll be on crickets about 1/2 inch long then and believe me they'll find it throughout the night.
This is what I do, many have different methods but i personally have success this way.

[Richard Shah]

Rich, everyone's been giving you advice for the last few months that reflects what Peter Roach says above. Personally I think a larger tub than Peter suggests is fine (everyone has differences of opinion but Peter's been doing this far longer than I) but your 30x30x30 is way too big for such a small T. They are not the hunter we'd like to think they are, they tend to stay in one small spot and wait for the food to come to them.
Simple cure, and one I and many suggested a long time ago. Get some smaller tubs and put them inside your Exo-terra (or fish tank as it was before). You can get small tubs from most supermarkets etc quite easily and at very low cost - expect to pay less than a packet of crisps!

I had a ferrero Rocher's box (standard cuboid one) ready for the 3cm T. (at the time I still thought it would be three centimetres) - what do you think about that??
Also, that means I need to go and buy a plant pot for it - does homebase do small enough ones that they sell by themselves?

Hopefully the T. will have a little bit of a growth spurt in the next moult and then I can promptly give it back its rightful home - when it's 2 1/2 inches it'll be back in that exo terra!
What should I do in the meantime so that the substrate doesn't become so hard that it would be difficult to get it moist again? Should I just spill water on the substrate, let it soak and then when it nears to the T. moving back in I'll wet it no more and let it dry out a bit??

[Andrew Ferguson]

Homebase, B&Q, Wilko's (Mary, can you back me up on this?) all sell those little pots in multiple packs. Not on their own. But expect to pay a very small amount. I'd perhaps put the Ferrero Rocher enclosure inside the 12" x 12" tank.

One other piece of advise. I saw loads of vids on You-tube of tarantulas feeding on crickets and expected mine to do the same. But if you think throwing a cricket into its den is like throwing Christians to the lions*, think again. I put in a cricket on Monday and Smiffy and the cricket would meet and turn in opposite directions. I didn't remove it within 24 hours ( ) as I would normally do. Yet today I came home and saw a lone long hind leg on the substrate by Smiffy and a cricket being chomped on. That's the first feed its taken in over a fortnight.

* Not something I advocate by the way. It was something the Roman's did!