Feeding and watering advice

[Jane Mitchell]

Hi all,

Just a quick question, how often should we be feeding our L. Para? He's a good 6" since he moulted and we're feeding him black crickets (up to 1" in length) every other day. If they are smaller, we sometimes give him 2. Is this enough? He's put web absolutely everywhere over his tank - so much so that he tends to get it stuck all over him when he climbs about. Is this a sign that he's hungry and trying to catch more food?

Another quickie while I'm here. Over the last couple of weeks, I've noticed some microscopic white things in his water dish. It's only shallow (about 1/2" deep) and we just have some stones in it, not sponge or anything. I use ordinary tap water and top it up and let it overflow regularly so it keeps the humidity up. We first noticed them a couple of weeks ago so we took the pot out, gave it all a good clean and now it looks like their back again. Is this anything to be worried about?

Cheers
Jane

[Mrs Linda Street]

Hi Jane, we've got 4 L Para's and a L. Klugi, all females the largest being a good 9" + l.s. we find their eating is all over the place, a couple of them are ready to eat all the time, and we've one large female that's not eaten for over 5 months, and the rest are somewhere in between. We look to feed the bigger ones about 4 large Crickets or a couple of roaches about every 5 days, unless they've started eating again after a moult, and then we give them extra for a couple of weeks.

What is in the water is quite common, they are tiny mites attracted by the moisture and are not a problem unless they get out of hand. We don't subscribe to overflowing the water dish as this makes it worse, just try cleaning out the corner where the dish stands and replacing it with dry substrate from another area of the tank, which usually keeps them in check, and we find ocassional misting best, and the bigger Para's are not too moisture sensitive anyway. Two of ours are very heavy webbers, whilst the others hardly web at all. Strangely one of our Paras is very very dark, and she's always been a heavy webber, and actually sits in them. We keep them around the 22-25c and they are a nice terrestial display T.

[Jane Mitchell]

Thanks Linda. With the feeding, we'll just keep doing what we're doing. He always eats them within minutes of them being put in so we know he's hungry. The webs are fantastic - I really think he's getting into the Christmas spirit and putting the decorations up at the moment. He's absolutely fascinating to watch!

I keep having mixed advice about the water. We were having a problem keeping the humidity up which is why we were wetting the substrate around the water dish. I'll try spraying again and see how we go.

Thanks for the advice and have a great Christmas
Jane

[Peter Lacey]

Drying the tank out completely will kill off the mites before it has any impact on your T. If they're refined to the water dish a simple flush under the tap will remove the problem. They are omnipresent and often arrive on food items. Watch out for left over food, bolus and moulds, removing these will remove the mites food source, but as above don't worry too much unless they grow rapidly. There's an excellent post about mites within this forum well worth a read: http://thebts.co.uk/forums/showpost....91&postcount=6
Consider the web the parahybana is laying down as its carpet. It helps to furnish its home leaving signs back to its hide and tripwires to alert it to insects, its also likely to contain plenty of irritating to hairs to ward off sniffing predators!

[James Box]

there's always a chance they are springtails...beneficial little detritovores. see if they jump if you disturb them.
that being said, it's been argued most mites are detritovores too, the pale ones anyway. usually not a big problem, just a tad unsightly.
i believe springtails tend to move alot faster than mites, so that might help identify.
i don't tend to bother much with humidity for my para's, they're doing fine!