Unsuccessful: P. irminia mating attempt

These guys tried for more than 20 minutes. The male kept wanting to take the female from the rear or the side. She's a little small anyway, so the male is going out on loan. Meet Nigel and Kracken.

She looks fat to me, too...could she possibly be in premoult?

Maybe, she molted a few months ago, so she could be due. I don't really remember what day it was, except I confirmed she was female. I am pretty sure her last molt was in September.

funnylori said:

Maybe, she molted a few months ago, so she could be due. I don't really remember what day it was, except I confirmed she was female. I am pretty sure her last molt was in September.

Click to expand...

She looks like she has a bit more growing to do, but I'd expect more than 4 months between moults for a specimen of this size...so I'd say premoult is doubtful.

Good luck with the babies. I'm looking for a female irminia myself so when I get that, I'll be picking up a few slings of this species for my own breeding project.

Keep good notes and I'll probably end up picking your brain one of these days.

She does look pretty juicy. You can see yellow through her hairs, so she isn't in premolt I suppose. She is in that terrible phase when the molts begin spreading out by months and months... I'm always in suspense. I almost prefer the little ones because they usually molt more frequently.

Mike fed her a large roach the other day. He was given orders to fatten her up. She is about 4 inches or so in legspan. I'm going to give it another try before shipping her boyfriend out.

Feel free to pick my brain. Just know, I put them in neutral territory, and it was more like "Chase the buggers for 30 minutes with 2 friends to help wrangle." I ended up having to put the lid on the box so they wouldn't get out again, and then I felt like I had defeated the purpose of all my hard work. At least I could see from all sides pretty much unhindered.