Questions about P irminia sling

[goonius]

My teen daughter and I got a number of slings the beginning of September, including a 1/4" P irminia. We have been keeping adults and juveniles for a number of months, but are pretty new to slings, so we did a great deal of research about each species beforehand, and so far all are doing well and have just made it through their first molt in the past couple of weeks.

The P irminia, much like our P gigas and T violaceus slings of the same size, spends most of its time in an intricate underground dirt curtain/web behind a lean-to of corkbark (I'm including photos of the enclosure, and a photo of the day we got the tarantula -- we don't have any more recent photos). For the first month we had it, the P irminia had a great food response (we feed pinhead b lats) and that would be the only time we would see it, a momentary flash of spider when we would drop the prey in, and occasional little spider feet poking out in anticipation of a meal. About 2 weeks ago, it disappeared entirely and stopped responding to prey being dropped in. We assumed it was in premolt, like the others of the same age. The other spiders have all molted and resumed eating, but the P irminia is still unresponsive to prey (or water droplets on the web, or anything) and we have seen no signs of life for two weeks now.

I do know that tarantulas can just disappear like this, but in the case of a sling this tiny, for how long might they do this? Is this typical P irminia sling behavior? We believe its abdomen was quite plump before its disappearance. Is it possible it had a bad molt or something and died? At what point would we assume this was the case, if so? I'm fine to patiently await its return, but would just appreciate a little guidance from the more experienced keepers of this species and young slings on what we should expect
Thanks

 

[Arachnoclown]

Id try to carefully take a peak at it to see whats up. Premolt in slings is rather quick...not weeks to months like juveniles and adults.

 

[goonius]

Id try to carefully take a peak at it to see whats up. Premolt in slings is rather quick...not weeks to months like juveniles and adults.

Thanks. We left some prekilled prey in there this afternoon, right near where the primary entrance was behind the cork bark. I figure we will give it another 24 hours to make an appearance, or for the food to be disturbed. I know tarantulas can do odd things, but I do sort of fear the worst. I feel we should have seen some movement or disturbance in all this time. If there's still no movement we will try to carefully check and see if the sling is still alive. I'll update with what we find.