New Keeper! Please Help.

[Huw Jones]

Hi there,

as you probably guessed i am new to keeping tarantulas and i just have a few questions.

pretty much everything is going great so far but my Chilean Rose just seems to sit in one spot of her tank, i'm using potting soil given to me by the pet shop owner. I've read that the soil should be pressed flat and then left to dry out so the base is not loose and lumpy...something which I have not done! is this true? does the spider prefer it? I know this sounds very trivial and probably doesn't matter but I want my girl to be as happy as possible.

Also when I bought her she had just shed and now isn't really interested in her food...is there a connection between these things or am I just being paranoid?

I'm really enjoying keeping my spider and would be really grateful if anyone had any other information that might help me through this learning stage. I've read a fair bit on the net but its those little things that always help more.

Thanks.

[Craig White]

Hi there,

as you probably guessed i am new to keeping tarantulas and i just have a few questions.

pretty much everything is going great so far but my Chilean Rose just seems to sit in one spot of her tank, i'm using potting soil given to me by the pet shop owner. I've read that the soil should be pressed flat and then left to dry out so the base is not loose and lumpy...something which I have not done! is this true? does the spider prefer it? I know this sounds very trivial and probably doesn't matter but I want my girl to be as happy as possible.

Also when I bought her she had just shed and now isn't really interested in her food...is there a connection between these things or am I just being paranoid?

I'm really enjoying keeping my spider and would be really grateful if anyone had any other information that might help me through this learning stage. I've read a fair bit on the net but its those little things that always help more.

Thanks.

Hi and welcome to thebts,

my 1st spid was a chile rose too, from my experience i have found if its too moist for them they climb the walls, so your spid must be happy with the current substrate and humidity, although they come from the desert so so prefer a dry environment

chile rose are notoriously slow growers, depending on size they could take up to a month or more to become interested in food after a shed skin, it also depends on what your spid was being fed before ( I have some spids that will only eat crickets and others will only eat locusts) My advice would be to try a cricket or locust once a week and leave it in for 24 hours (if uneaten then remove the food item) another way to tell if the spid is ready for a meal is to look at the fangs (if possible), red fangs mean the spider has not hardened enough to take food, black fangs mean they are hard enough to take food.

good luck with your new spid although they are a hardy species and can put up with a lot that other species would not be able to..ie humidity, temps etc.

hope this has helped....

i'm sure i wont be the only reply you get to this thread

Craig

ps i forgot to mention the chile rose is known as a pet rock ( they dont move around very much but make great display spiders)

[Mrs Linda Street]

Hi Huw, welcome to the forum. Are you talking 'plant potting compost' I can't speak on that, only that I wouldn't use it, eco-earth blocks, are sterile coconut fibre and I would think more suitable, it's soaked and then dried. Chilis like dry substrate, use a half plant pot or similar for a hide, make sure she has fresh water available at all times. If she's just moulted, she won't be interested in food for a while as they need time to recover and harden after a moult, give her a week, keep her around the 70-75F mark, and then try her with food every other day, removing it if not eaten.

[Phil Rea]

Welcome to the forum and to the hobby Huw

Your spider isn't doing anything that sounds outrageous to me. G. rosea are notoriously strange behaviourally. As long as the spider has constant access to water and the abdomen looks rounded and not shrunken then you are most likely fine.

Potting soil is OK, and it sounds dry enough, or the spider probably would be climbing. Sometimes, if they are uncomfortable with the substrate though, they will spin a web over one part of it and just stay there on the web until it dries out to their liking.

Linda has made a good point about a hide. I would definitely recommend one for a G. rosea, however she may upturn it, web it closed, bury it, do all three, or even actually use it! You can never tell with them.

I wouldn't worry about the food either. Offer her food, and if she hasn't eaten it within 24 hours, remove it and leave her for a week, and try again. If she is hungry and settled then she will eat

[Mrs Linda Street]

Good point there Phil, they're always up to something, ours actually gets her water dish, empties it, rolls it in front of her hide and then webs the whole lot up, then sits on top of the hide lol.

[Huw Jones]

Thanks for the replies, that was great.

she does have a bark hide but doesn't seem interested in it! she seems to prefer sitting by the side of it! i don't like disturbing her much at the moment in the hope that she'll become more relaxed and start to sus out her tank.

I know that she has been fed crickets in the shop but now im using locusts as thats what i feed my geckos...but will definately try crickets!

oh, and thanks for the advice on the fangs craig...that'll come in handy.

I'm quite confident that she'll adapt but its always nice to get those creases ironed out.

Thanks again

[Kurt Baird]

she does have a bark hide but doesn't seem interested in it! she seems to prefer sitting by the side of it! i don't like disturbing her much at the moment in the hope that she'll become more relaxed and start to sus out her tank.

As said, she may not choose to use it, but it should be provided anyway. Mine took about four months to use the hide I provided, and one day I came home, found half a load of substrate piled up on one side and a nicely dug out burrow she had made.

I'd give her a couple of weeks to settle in before feeding. They are temperamental feeders at the best of times, which is something you should probably be warned about. :P Don't panic if they go several weeks / months at a time as this is perfectly normal Chile behaviour!