Stefan2209
10-08-2007, 06:05 AM
Hi,
something new from my side, literally.
I had every now and then mentioned that I got hold of a new species of Ctenidae by the end of last year. The species came in from the Amazon region of Peru, just one single adult female. The specimen is already pictured here in the boards in one (or two?) of my picture threads.
What I haven't mentioned here so far is that since I got hold of that specimen I got more and more fascinated about it as there are some rather strange things with this creepy:
The spider is quite large and massive, measuring some 4cm (1,6”) body length and approx. 10cm (4”) leg span.
The whole built of the spider reminds me of Ancylometes. However, this spider is coloured in velvet black without any markings. This is rather untypical for what I'm used from Ancylometes.
Keeping of the adult specimen proofed to be quite easy, just some enclosure with peat moss, that needs to be kept quite humid that´s all to keep her happy.
Apparently the lady was doing quite ok with this as she was an aggressive feeder from the start on.
I quickly had to realize that there were more aspects within the behaviour of this spider that reminded one of Ancylometes:
Like the giant – fishers and in contrast to next to all other Ctenids apparently this species can´t climb smooth surfaces too well.
After some weeks in my care the spider built me a sac. Unfortunately I wasn´t at home at that time so I couldn't take proper care about that, I just realized it when I came home from Peru. The sac was noteworthy as it had a paper – like outer appearance like I'm used to from Ancylometes.
With that genus such sacs are constructed as these spiders show a quite unique behaviour of breeding care: they press their sacs with their bodies below the water surface to enhance climatic conditions within the sac for hatching.
The strange hull makes their sacs water resistant.
Now I had this strange spider constructing a sac in exactly that very same style. Interesting.
Unfortunately the sac got abandoned one week after I was back. I fed the lady as much as she wanted to eat and some weeks after that I was rewarded with a second sac, damn had I high hopes!
I supplied the lady now with a water bowel and could witness on the very same evening how the spider used the water to drown her sac. Everything seemed pretty fine.
For exactly 28 days. Ancylometes sacs usually take something from 28 – 30 days to hatch, so I expected something similar from this species.
From the second week on I could observe a constant growth of the sac.
At the 28th day the lady chose again to drop her sac. I was devastated.
I got the sac out and carefully cut it open: some 200 dried out eggs, but some 50 – 70 more that had apparently developed and would need just one more moult inside the sac to hatch.
And: damn, those things were still alive, I could notice weak movements.
I rescued all living creepies and tried to incubate them artificially. Unfortunately to no avail: five days later everything was dead.
Believe me, I was just angry as hell.
I have bred and raised next to any Ctenidae I could just get hold of: different Phoneutria, four different Ancylometes, a bunch of smaller, unidentified Ctenidae and now this.
I had also unintentionally reproduced some species, now I was confronted with a species that I just wanted to reproduce and even though I did all I could everything failed. What a ******* mess!
Guess what: some weeks later I was given a third sac. I have to admit that I was still crushed so I didn't pay too much attention.
And I was right to do so, just three days after the spider had built the sac she devoured it already again. I wasn´t pleased with this but wasn´t surprised either, what else to expect.
Through some deaths in my breeding stock and general changes in specimens, I decided I'd just rehouse that spider. Not to start another attempt for reproduction but more to be able to better observe this particular specimen. I had lost all hopes for offspring so it seemed important to me to at least get to know as much as possible out of this single female.
Set her just up in an other tank with the same setup and same climatic conditions. Nothing fancy, no big deal.
Of course I was still pretty interested in this strange spider as I was (and am) still wondering about what I was dealing with here.
Literally EVERYTHING just looks like it´d be Ancylometes, however, some other things just don't fit. Weird. Weird, BUT: nevertheless, very interesting.
Through a friend of mine whom I had sent pics of that specimen I was pointed to the homepage of a German museum where a picture of an adult female of Ctenus villasboasi was shown. That spider just looked like mine.
I dug for infos about that species but couldn't come up with much. At least that few bits I found fitted in with what I was observing here. Should this be the species I was keeping?
Some time later I got in touch with Peruvian Ctenidae specialist Diana Silva.
I told Diana about that strange spider I got from Peru and she could tell me some things about the species in question.
However, even with that infos I could neither fix that species ID nor could I rule it out.
By September I was built a fourth sac of that spider. Honestly, I was really embarrassed about that: I'm really into things like zynism, sarcasm and so on but too much is just too much. All that futile hopes…
I just told my lady to **** off and didn't care anymore about that as I already knew what would come out of that.
At the very same time I got in touch with that scientist who had taken the pics of that mentioned Ct. villasboasi.
This was a gain: as I was told Ct. villasboasi has indeed no ABDOMINAL patterns or markings, BUT very conspicuous markings at the ventral side.
Well, my specimen is lacking such, so I guess this idea can just be ruled out.
Back to scratch: what is this?
Three weeks after the sac got constructed I have to admit I started to get curious again, as the sac not only was still there but I could also observe some growing…
I didn't hang my hopes too high but peaked every other day into that enclosure.
Week 4 came and went without anything hatching, my hopes were declining again. Well, I had known this in advance, what else to expect.
In week 5 I finally found what I had waited for, some day I got up and found the sac abandoned. No surprise. Not what I had wished for, but…
I should have turned on the lights earlier, I had noticed instantly when I entered the room that the sac was dropped, what I just realized when I turned the lights on was: heck, the sac had hatched!
No big deal, but well enough for a fourth sac: approx. some 70 – 100 offspring! Boy, was I happy!
Now here´s finally the chance to learn some more about this species: maybe adult males will show some markings that will give a clue to at least with what genus I'm dealing here?
Who knows, but finally here´s at least the chance to find out.
Gave away some slings to other breeders who “know what they´re doing” and separated some 35 specimen for my own breeding stem.
This is exactly four weeks ago. As mentioned, I have reproduced a whole bunch of different Ctenidae species out of different genera this year, some proofed to be quite easy to raise, some were rather difficult, some had sky high mortality rates, some other not.
You´ll never know what you´ll get with such.
Well, by now the least I can say is until now everything works much better than I had dared to hope for:
I set up the specimen five days after they had hatched in small plastic boxes, some 7cm (3”) wide and 5cm (2”) high. I perforated the lid of the boxes to enable air flow.
As substrate I use 1cm of peat moss that I keep constantly moist, so that humidity is around 90% (max) – 70% (min).
Temperature is approx. 23 – 24°C for daytime hours and down to 20°C for nighttime.
I do maintenance work just one time per week, not more. As prey I use micro – crickets which work already quite well even for fresh hatched slings as long as one just picks out the smallest micro´s.
Per feeding I usually give just one or two crickets to each specimen, depending on how fat the individual specimen already is.
Some things are noteworthy:
After two weeks I got really concerned when I started to do maintenance, as I couldn't find any spider. It's not usual to have some mortality with fresh hatched Ctenids, with some species a bit more, with some other a bit less.
However, a complete loss of a whole species is very, very rare. I was really worried, every box I checked was just empty.
I finally dug through that peat moss without much hope, but, HEY, look at this, the small fellows hid in the substrate!
I just flooded the other boxes and after some seconds there was a spider popping up in each single box!
Apparently this species likes to dig when they are young. I have never seen such a pronounced behaviour in any other Ctenid I have raised.
Even the mother showed never the slightest interest in burrowing.
Interesting.
Without much surprise I could furthermore witness the slings to show some markings that resemble the markings that can be found in fresh hatched offspring of some Ancylometes species.
The last maintenance cycle yielded a nice surprise: just today, four weeks after the slings hatched, I have exactly two losses out of 35. This is a very good start. I really hope it´ll stay this way. There will be some more deaths I guess (out of mere experience), but the worst stage is already passed, the slings are now in second instar and are active and voracious.
What more can one ask for with a completely new species.
I´ll continue to document the development of this species every now and then as news happen.
Finally, some pics of what I talk here:
Rearing enclosure of Ctenidae spp. “Iquitos, Peru”, cb 2. instar
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b50/Stefan2209/PICT0814.jpg
Ctenidae spp. "Iquitos, Peru", cb, 2. instar
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b50/Stefan2209/Ctenidaespp1.jpg
Still tiny, however, killing and feeding already works as smooth as in adult specimen :)
Ctenidae spp. "Iquitos, Peru", cb, 2. instar, snacking on a micro - cricket
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b50/Stefan2209/Ctenidaespp2.jpg
Ctenidae spp. "Iquitos, Peru", adult wc female, "Mom"
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b50/Stefan2209/PICT3845.jpg
Ctenidae spp. "Iquitos, Peru", adult wc female, "Mom" with sac
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b50/Stefan2209/PICT0380.jpg
To be continued...
Greetings,
Stefan
something new from my side, literally.
I had every now and then mentioned that I got hold of a new species of Ctenidae by the end of last year. The species came in from the Amazon region of Peru, just one single adult female. The specimen is already pictured here in the boards in one (or two?) of my picture threads.
What I haven't mentioned here so far is that since I got hold of that specimen I got more and more fascinated about it as there are some rather strange things with this creepy:
The spider is quite large and massive, measuring some 4cm (1,6”) body length and approx. 10cm (4”) leg span.
The whole built of the spider reminds me of Ancylometes. However, this spider is coloured in velvet black without any markings. This is rather untypical for what I'm used from Ancylometes.
Keeping of the adult specimen proofed to be quite easy, just some enclosure with peat moss, that needs to be kept quite humid that´s all to keep her happy.
Apparently the lady was doing quite ok with this as she was an aggressive feeder from the start on.
I quickly had to realize that there were more aspects within the behaviour of this spider that reminded one of Ancylometes:
Like the giant – fishers and in contrast to next to all other Ctenids apparently this species can´t climb smooth surfaces too well.
After some weeks in my care the spider built me a sac. Unfortunately I wasn´t at home at that time so I couldn't take proper care about that, I just realized it when I came home from Peru. The sac was noteworthy as it had a paper – like outer appearance like I'm used to from Ancylometes.
With that genus such sacs are constructed as these spiders show a quite unique behaviour of breeding care: they press their sacs with their bodies below the water surface to enhance climatic conditions within the sac for hatching.
The strange hull makes their sacs water resistant.
Now I had this strange spider constructing a sac in exactly that very same style. Interesting.
Unfortunately the sac got abandoned one week after I was back. I fed the lady as much as she wanted to eat and some weeks after that I was rewarded with a second sac, damn had I high hopes!
I supplied the lady now with a water bowel and could witness on the very same evening how the spider used the water to drown her sac. Everything seemed pretty fine.
For exactly 28 days. Ancylometes sacs usually take something from 28 – 30 days to hatch, so I expected something similar from this species.
From the second week on I could observe a constant growth of the sac.
At the 28th day the lady chose again to drop her sac. I was devastated.
I got the sac out and carefully cut it open: some 200 dried out eggs, but some 50 – 70 more that had apparently developed and would need just one more moult inside the sac to hatch.
And: damn, those things were still alive, I could notice weak movements.
I rescued all living creepies and tried to incubate them artificially. Unfortunately to no avail: five days later everything was dead.
Believe me, I was just angry as hell.
I have bred and raised next to any Ctenidae I could just get hold of: different Phoneutria, four different Ancylometes, a bunch of smaller, unidentified Ctenidae and now this.
I had also unintentionally reproduced some species, now I was confronted with a species that I just wanted to reproduce and even though I did all I could everything failed. What a ******* mess!
Guess what: some weeks later I was given a third sac. I have to admit that I was still crushed so I didn't pay too much attention.
And I was right to do so, just three days after the spider had built the sac she devoured it already again. I wasn´t pleased with this but wasn´t surprised either, what else to expect.
Through some deaths in my breeding stock and general changes in specimens, I decided I'd just rehouse that spider. Not to start another attempt for reproduction but more to be able to better observe this particular specimen. I had lost all hopes for offspring so it seemed important to me to at least get to know as much as possible out of this single female.
Set her just up in an other tank with the same setup and same climatic conditions. Nothing fancy, no big deal.
Of course I was still pretty interested in this strange spider as I was (and am) still wondering about what I was dealing with here.
Literally EVERYTHING just looks like it´d be Ancylometes, however, some other things just don't fit. Weird. Weird, BUT: nevertheless, very interesting.
Through a friend of mine whom I had sent pics of that specimen I was pointed to the homepage of a German museum where a picture of an adult female of Ctenus villasboasi was shown. That spider just looked like mine.
I dug for infos about that species but couldn't come up with much. At least that few bits I found fitted in with what I was observing here. Should this be the species I was keeping?
Some time later I got in touch with Peruvian Ctenidae specialist Diana Silva.
I told Diana about that strange spider I got from Peru and she could tell me some things about the species in question.
However, even with that infos I could neither fix that species ID nor could I rule it out.
By September I was built a fourth sac of that spider. Honestly, I was really embarrassed about that: I'm really into things like zynism, sarcasm and so on but too much is just too much. All that futile hopes…
I just told my lady to **** off and didn't care anymore about that as I already knew what would come out of that.
At the very same time I got in touch with that scientist who had taken the pics of that mentioned Ct. villasboasi.
This was a gain: as I was told Ct. villasboasi has indeed no ABDOMINAL patterns or markings, BUT very conspicuous markings at the ventral side.
Well, my specimen is lacking such, so I guess this idea can just be ruled out.
Back to scratch: what is this?
Three weeks after the sac got constructed I have to admit I started to get curious again, as the sac not only was still there but I could also observe some growing…
I didn't hang my hopes too high but peaked every other day into that enclosure.
Week 4 came and went without anything hatching, my hopes were declining again. Well, I had known this in advance, what else to expect.
In week 5 I finally found what I had waited for, some day I got up and found the sac abandoned. No surprise. Not what I had wished for, but…
I should have turned on the lights earlier, I had noticed instantly when I entered the room that the sac was dropped, what I just realized when I turned the lights on was: heck, the sac had hatched!
No big deal, but well enough for a fourth sac: approx. some 70 – 100 offspring! Boy, was I happy!
Now here´s finally the chance to learn some more about this species: maybe adult males will show some markings that will give a clue to at least with what genus I'm dealing here?
Who knows, but finally here´s at least the chance to find out.
Gave away some slings to other breeders who “know what they´re doing” and separated some 35 specimen for my own breeding stem.
This is exactly four weeks ago. As mentioned, I have reproduced a whole bunch of different Ctenidae species out of different genera this year, some proofed to be quite easy to raise, some were rather difficult, some had sky high mortality rates, some other not.
You´ll never know what you´ll get with such.
Well, by now the least I can say is until now everything works much better than I had dared to hope for:
I set up the specimen five days after they had hatched in small plastic boxes, some 7cm (3”) wide and 5cm (2”) high. I perforated the lid of the boxes to enable air flow.
As substrate I use 1cm of peat moss that I keep constantly moist, so that humidity is around 90% (max) – 70% (min).
Temperature is approx. 23 – 24°C for daytime hours and down to 20°C for nighttime.
I do maintenance work just one time per week, not more. As prey I use micro – crickets which work already quite well even for fresh hatched slings as long as one just picks out the smallest micro´s.
Per feeding I usually give just one or two crickets to each specimen, depending on how fat the individual specimen already is.
Some things are noteworthy:
After two weeks I got really concerned when I started to do maintenance, as I couldn't find any spider. It's not usual to have some mortality with fresh hatched Ctenids, with some species a bit more, with some other a bit less.
However, a complete loss of a whole species is very, very rare. I was really worried, every box I checked was just empty.
I finally dug through that peat moss without much hope, but, HEY, look at this, the small fellows hid in the substrate!
I just flooded the other boxes and after some seconds there was a spider popping up in each single box!
Apparently this species likes to dig when they are young. I have never seen such a pronounced behaviour in any other Ctenid I have raised.
Even the mother showed never the slightest interest in burrowing.
Interesting.
Without much surprise I could furthermore witness the slings to show some markings that resemble the markings that can be found in fresh hatched offspring of some Ancylometes species.
The last maintenance cycle yielded a nice surprise: just today, four weeks after the slings hatched, I have exactly two losses out of 35. This is a very good start. I really hope it´ll stay this way. There will be some more deaths I guess (out of mere experience), but the worst stage is already passed, the slings are now in second instar and are active and voracious.
What more can one ask for with a completely new species.
I´ll continue to document the development of this species every now and then as news happen.
Finally, some pics of what I talk here:
Rearing enclosure of Ctenidae spp. “Iquitos, Peru”, cb 2. instar
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b50/Stefan2209/PICT0814.jpg
Ctenidae spp. "Iquitos, Peru", cb, 2. instar
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b50/Stefan2209/Ctenidaespp1.jpg
Still tiny, however, killing and feeding already works as smooth as in adult specimen :)
Ctenidae spp. "Iquitos, Peru", cb, 2. instar, snacking on a micro - cricket
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b50/Stefan2209/Ctenidaespp2.jpg
Ctenidae spp. "Iquitos, Peru", adult wc female, "Mom"
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b50/Stefan2209/PICT3845.jpg
Ctenidae spp. "Iquitos, Peru", adult wc female, "Mom" with sac
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b50/Stefan2209/PICT0380.jpg
To be continued...
Greetings,
Stefan