Jenniferinfl
Active Member
- Messages
- 113
- Location
- Florida
So, I bought around 35 small spiderlings, mostly in June and July. Most of them are doing great and are more juveniles now than spiderlings.
I have one though that I think passed. It was a Heterothele gabonensis and was a teeny, tiny .25" spiderling. It was feeding well on fruit flies, built a nice web tunnel. It molted back in early July and then disappeared again in the middle of August, presumably for another molt. In between, it was just an eating machine and I had no reason to suspect anything may be wrong. Anyhow, a few days ago I finally got tired of waiting for it to emerge and took apart it's little amac cube to see what was up. Couldn't find it anywhere. Of course, it was absolutely tiny. I do have springtails in my enclosures, so if it died it would have been eaten eventually. But, of course, it's tiny and if it decided to freeze up there's a chance I still could have missed it sorting through the substrate, so, I put all the substrate back in the enclosure and figured I'd wait a few weeks and see if another web tunnel shows up.
At what point do you assume it's definitely dead and give up on it? I was thinking if no new webbing or tunnels appear in the next month I'll sift through the substrate one more time and then put the whole thing in the freezer for a couple days just in case so I don't accidentally toss out a live spiderling with the substrate. I'm like 95% sure it died during it's last molt attempt and got eaten by springtails.
I shouldn't complain, only losing one out of 35 isn't bad at all and most of the others have cleared the 1" mark, but, it's still frustrating since it was doing so well.
I have one though that I think passed. It was a Heterothele gabonensis and was a teeny, tiny .25" spiderling. It was feeding well on fruit flies, built a nice web tunnel. It molted back in early July and then disappeared again in the middle of August, presumably for another molt. In between, it was just an eating machine and I had no reason to suspect anything may be wrong. Anyhow, a few days ago I finally got tired of waiting for it to emerge and took apart it's little amac cube to see what was up. Couldn't find it anywhere. Of course, it was absolutely tiny. I do have springtails in my enclosures, so if it died it would have been eaten eventually. But, of course, it's tiny and if it decided to freeze up there's a chance I still could have missed it sorting through the substrate, so, I put all the substrate back in the enclosure and figured I'd wait a few weeks and see if another web tunnel shows up.
At what point do you assume it's definitely dead and give up on it? I was thinking if no new webbing or tunnels appear in the next month I'll sift through the substrate one more time and then put the whole thing in the freezer for a couple days just in case so I don't accidentally toss out a live spiderling with the substrate. I'm like 95% sure it died during it's last molt attempt and got eaten by springtails.
I shouldn't complain, only losing one out of 35 isn't bad at all and most of the others have cleared the 1" mark, but, it's still frustrating since it was doing so well.