Introduction

[CieloAngel]

Hello. I am a 40-something year old mother of 2 young adults who got into T keeping just over a year ago. I used to have a pretty big fear of spiders, but with a healthy respect. I even kept a tarantula or two as a child (I know for sure one that was wild-caught in my grandmother's storm cellar in north Texas). I of course wouldn't get too close, and it did die pretty quick (we didn't do much tarantula research), but I never even remotely thought about keeping another until last year. What got me re-interested was that my son has pretty much always been into insects, and when he was probably around 10 or so, we started raising monarchs and he had some hissing roaches. Through his teenage years, he sort of lost interest in insects, but in the last couple of years, it came back with a passion. He started pinning insects, we started raising many more butterfly and moth species, and even started raising some locally caught insects, such as beetles, mantids, and stick insects. I even bought him 5 Giant Prickly stick insects just before most stick insects became unavailable/illegal to buy in the US (and probably even a little after, but before I personally knew they were illegal). Either way, last year we would take lots of hikes, and my son (who is 17 by this point), would "play" with a lot of the spiders we would find. Watching him interact with these spiders was got me thinking about my earlier experiences with tarantulas, and I never was fully afraid of them. I think something about the way they move and how slow they generally are always made them my least feared spider. So I decided to try keeping "A" tarantula again.

I did a little bit of generic research on tarantulas before I actually went to PetCo to buy my first T. While there, they had two or three T's for sale. One was supposedly a GBB (more on that later), and the other a Venezuelan Suntiger. We looked them up on our phones and I decided to buy the GBB. I brought it home and started caring for it.

A few weeks after I got it home and it disappeared for a while is when I really started researching T's in depth. That is when I discovered that most people have more than one T, not only because of all the amazing different species, but because that almost guarantees that at least one T is visible . From there, it has been pretty downhill. I don't think I will ever get up to keeping hundreds of them, but I could possibly see getting up to around 50.

So since that first T from PetCo, I have purchased 24 more Ts, and 4 JSs. I also have added two wild-caught JSs. Of the total 25 Ts I have purchased, I currently have 23 of them. I seem to have problems with C. elegans. My first one escaped, and my second one died suddenly after a month or two. I am now on my third one. Of the 6 total JSs I brought in, I have 5 left. While I was on a 2 week road-trip with my kids, my neighbor and ex-husband both tried feeding my spiders and one of them must have let the latest wild-caught one free. He was a very fast Whitman's jumper.

Oh, and as promised if you read the full thread, I said earlier that the first one I bought from Petco was supposedly a GBB, but it was not. It was actually a curly hair that they sold to me as a GBB, because of course they don't know much about T's.

So my current collection (in order of aquisition) is as follows (the bottom ones don't have names yet because I just got them in the last two weeks):

"Ocho" T. albopilosum: male juvenile/sub-adult
"Chaco" G. pulchripes: unsexed sling
"Coco" A. geniculata: unsexed sling
"Roux" B. hamorii: unsexed sling
p. paykulli (JS): mature female (wild-caught) - I have no idea why I haven't given her a name yet...
"Spunky" L. parahybana: unsexed sling/juvenile
"Loki" T. schroederi: unsexed sling
"Skittles" C. versicolor: unsexed sling/juvenile
"Tickles" T. albopilosum: unsexed juvenile
"Tigre" P. irminia: mature male
"Ritz" P. metallica: unsexed juvenile
"Rayas" P. irminia: female juvenile
"Corney" Fufius sp. "Gold": unsexed sling
"Jinx" Aphonopelma sp. "Diamondback": unsexed sling
"Togo" H. maculata: unsexed juvenile
"Blu" C. cyaneopubescens: mature female
"Felony" A. chalcodes: unsexed sub-adult
"Duff" T. vagans: unsexed sling
"Warden" G. pulchra: unsexed juvenile
"BB" P. sazimai: unsexed sling
"Quirell" P. audax (JS): unsexed subadult/adult
P. cambridgei: unsexed sling
P. cambridgei: unsexed sling
C. elegans: unsexed sling
P. murinus: unsexed sling
H. pulchripes: unsexed sling
H. formosus (was sp. "Colombia): unsexed sling
P. texanus (JS): mature male
P. texanus (JS): mature gravid female
P. cardinalis (JS): mature male

Sorry for the super long post. I write all of this like people would actually be interested in learning that much about me LOL. Anyway, that is my story and the next chapter is going to be learning what to do with my new gravid P. texanus. I have done research on how to raise the babies. The question will be what to do with them...

 

[Enn49]

Hello and welcome.
It really is an addictive hobby.

 

[m0lsx]

Hello & welcome to the forum.

 

[MBullock]

welcome. Get some fruitflies! lol
for the baby jumpers i suggest co-habbing the slings altogether for a while. they will actually teach one-another how to hunt by observing one-another. separate them once cannibalism ensues.

 

[Yvonne G]

Well of course we're interested! Isn't it amazing what an addictive hobby it is?

Welcome!

 

[CieloAngel]

Thank you for the warm welcomes everyone. And @MBullock, thank you for the advice. I actually found a video where a guy put them in the fruit fly deli cup with the fabric lid and a little excelsior and I liked that idea, so that is what I am going to try until the cannibalism begins. I also have been culturing fruit flies for a while now, especially because of the C. elegans I keep trying to raise, so I am good on those .

 

[Casey K.]

Welcome to the forum. So nice to have you here and to hear your story. I hope you come to enjoy this community as much as we all do. It's full of great information, inverts for sale and friendly folks!

 

[MBullock]

Thank you for the warm welcomes everyone. And @MBullock, thank you for the advice. I actually found a video where a guy put them in the fruit fly deli cup with the fabric lid and a little excelsior and I liked that idea, so that is what I am going to try until the cannibalism begins. I also have been culturing fruit flies for a while now, especially because of the C. elegans I keep trying to raise, so I am good on those .

the excelsior is not necessary, IMO- it's a waste of time, because if the slings really want to cannibalize, they will just chase down and capture their siblings anyway.

i just use 30 oz delicups with large airholes soldered in a ring-formation. then i cut sections of nylon knee-high and cover the holes, using bits of tape to keep it from slipping