A hello and a few questions!

[Gareth Griffiths]

Well, Smithy's been coming on for a week or two now and he's getting far more settled in. He is coming out of his flowerpot at regular times every night and is no longer dashing back inside at the first sign of noise near his tank.

He also left a cricket husk out for the first time today so I've removed that. Hopefully he'll continue to do that instead of taking them down the flowerpot where I can't get them.

I took this photo of him earlier:



Does the colouration of his abdomen mean he's about to molt? Quite a large dark patch there.

[michaelmckinney]

I think the dark patch you are looking at is the patch of urticating hairs that are kicked off as a defence mechanism. As the tarantulas grows it will cover more and more of the opisthosoma (abdomen) until it is covered entirely. But by the looks of it I would say there will be a molt soon, the rest of the abdomen is going dark and the red patella markings are a bit faded looking aswell which means you shouldn't have too long to wait, but what ever you do try not to keep waiting on the molt its like watching paint dry LOL the first time you usually don't check is when it happens LOL.

[Matthew Baines]

Speaking of ocular tubercle we got this really good macro picture of our cyriopagopus exuvium and you can see the possitioning of the eyes perfectly