Glasgow Andrew Has A Question

[Andrew Murdoch]

Hey you guys, its been a while since I have been on here.....I hate my job at the moment and am fed up....I need a new one....
Anyways, my T's appear to be doin fine, in saying that I am having problems with my small L.para's...well I think I am. They are a hastle to feed!! I have them in small tube like containers...ie. just under an inch diameter, does this type of small container restrict their growth? I pop in squashed crickets, small ones, I have trouble getting tiny crickets and other types of food stuffs for them, at times they appear to eat them and other times they don't go near the food stuff, also i thought it would be a good idea to leave the squashed food in with them, I think this may have causd mites, am I right in saying this? I might be doing better than I think. All the other T's I have are thriving and have moulted sucessfully at different times which has been cool. In fact my red-rump is moulting as I type.
As for my larger L.para, well it is crazy, this is a crazy T. Nasty, hungry and has attitude, well my one does. Hopefully he/sh will thrive and do well too.
Mex red knee is getting bold and sits out all the time now.
Sri-lankan ornimentals are doing well, all three of them. In saying that, two live together and I have only seen one, hope the other is ok. The speed of this type is frightening, my hand eye reaction is slow, very slow compared to this type, wow.
I hope I am making sence, the night shifts are killing me.....
Hope all you guys are doing well. And a big up to Steve W. for being a top geezer...

[Peter Roach]

I cant imagine parahybana'a being hard to feed
I bought 20 at the end of last summer with the average size of just under 1cm. I kept them in film canisters and fed them once weekly (sometimes twice but not often) with pinhead crickets and fruitflies until they molted to 1 1/2 cm, I then changed their weekly food to maggots and they are now eating adult lobster roaches. The average size is now 3 -3 1/2 inches with a mass shed due very soon.

There seems to be a few people (dare I say newbies ) on this forum who insist on feeding dead crickets to perfectly healthy slings and I really cannot understand why.
Spiders have evolved over millions of years to eat living prey and can 'take down' suprisingly large prey for their size especially slings who seem to be able to overpower prey almost their own size without much trouble. I have spoken to people who have said that I give my slings too large a size prey (generally people who are new to keeping Tarantulas) but from the 250+ slings that I bought last year I can say with hand on heart that I havent lost one due to giving too large a prey item.
There also seems to me a strange idea that all of the natural habitats of tarantulas worldwide are a steady 74 degrees . I recently read on another forum of someone who kept their sling at 21-22C and wondered why it hadnt grown or rarely ate in the year that they had had it but insisted that it was OK because it was a comfortable room temperature ... for them !!!!. I try to keep my spider shed at a steady 80F (27C ?) but it has risen to 94F (last week) when i forgot to set the A/C unit and as low as 62F (2 weeks ago) I turned off the heater and forgot to turn it on again.
So as you can see, tarantulas are very versatile and can withstand a large variation in temperatures (if reasonably brief) and likewise with their prey and its size. In the wild they cant be choosy as to which size they eat ..... within reason.

[Nicola Dolby]

Hi Andrew,
glad your spiders are doing well. I'd like to say the same about work myself but I've had that much medical stuff this past year I'm struggling to remember what work is. I had an incapacity benefit medical last week and when they told me today I'd passed I didn't know whether to be chuffed I'd kept my benefit or horrified that I'd been condemned to a couple more months of mind numbing boredom on the dole! Regarding the L. paras, try some larger containers, say 2" x 3" and a couple of inches of soil for burrowing. also if they're still small, try pre-killed maggots. My slings love these until they get to 3cm then its small crickets. Also watch the humidity, too much water can killas much as too little.
All the best,

[Andrew Ferguson]

There seems to be a few people (dare I say newbies ) on this forum who insist on feeding dead crickets to perfectly healthy slings and I really cannot understand why.

Peter, my little smithi took the moulted skin of the cricket rather than the live and kicking cricket. Or are you refering to me

[Peter Roach]

Removed because I had second thoughts on my post

[Kate Arbon]

Personally I feed my slings dead crickets, but only because it's easier for me to have a tub of frozen crickets than a tub of hundreds of tiny live ones! They don't seem to mind dead prey tho.

[Peter Roach]

Personally I feed my slings dead crickets, but only because it's easier for me to have a tub of frozen crickets than a tub of hundreds of tiny live ones! They don't seem to mind dead prey tho.

That makes sense.... sort of .... if you only have one or two spiders but i have a few hundred and will always have several thousand roaches, at least 4 different sizes of crickets numbering in the hundreds of each size plus other live foods at hand at all times.

[Nicola Dolby]

What a problem to have! The problem is that killing crickets or maggots is the same when you have that many spids its still all work.. You lucky thing!