Phoneutria reidyi slings are dying – how to raise survival rate?

[schlegelii]

Yes, Phoneutria slings can be extremely difficult. That’s nothing new to those who are familiar with Phoneutria.

I received 17 P. reidyi slings some weeks ago and now there is only 6 left. All spiders have been eating fruit flies very well and most of them have went through molt once or twice.

Despite of this they all die one by one. I have gone through usual experimentation on feeding amounts, different temperatures, humidity levels and amount of ventilation. Nothing seems to bring success. Two of them died during molting, other two before expected molt and rest even week after successful molt. Small terrariums were clean and I could not see or smell any mould or fungus on bare eye. Dead spiderlings seemed externally normal.

Usually this mystery is passed by recommendation to buy subadult or adult specimens. Sadly, that is not always possible. In many cases it is also not possible to obtain several hundred juveniles and
expect some of them to survive.

What is the cause of death? Is there any current theories, why someone can have good success with slings and some hobbyist end with catastrophe. What's the solution? How to raise survival rate?

[Raikiri]

I had the same situation with P. boliviensis. I received slings from 2 different breeders, one breeder's staff was perfect, all of them grow well but from the other breeder's staff nothing remained. Phoneutria are easy to care if You keep in mind what is amazonian and what is non-amazonian sp. If you tried different setups then I would say your slings were unhealthy weak ones. Try another breeder.. May I ask your source?

[toolrick]

Try to imitate the invironment where P. Redy is found in. Humidity should be very important as they are found in the Amazon. They also live in the top of the trees. Maybe if you can change this things, you will be lucky with the slings growing up.

[ErikWestblom]

Try to feed them other stuff too, like pinheads etc. Fruit flies just don't have enough nutrition to be a healthy food supply for a long time.

[melanie5]

Most Phoneutria slings don't do well on fruit flies. Try getting pinhead crickets. I feed them freshly killed ones.
My experience is that most true spider slings are hard to raise.

[doom]

I had no problems with P. reidyi slings or juveniles. It's true i had only a few slings and some juveniles one cm leg span. When i first got P. boliviensis slings i was worried to death wondering if they will manage to survive, because i had only two. But they did survive their critical sling stage to juvenile. Now i have six P. boliviensis slings and i can say they are all fit and strong. But i feed them only pinhead crickets and no fruitflies. If the prey is too big they will run away. I keep them in very humid environment. I think it's a mistery why this dying happens. But can you imagine what would happen if such big amount of slings would survive in the nature.

[UrbanJungles]

It's been shown before with some Huntsmen spiders that fruit flies are missing some essential nutrients. I start my Heteropoda on FF but immediately try to switch over to pinhead crickets and they do great. The ones that don't eat pinheads die a couple molts later, usually in mid-molt.

[schlegelii]

Thank’s for replies.

I bought these spiders from Vinmann. Actually i ordered only 10 of them but luckily package contained 17 of them.

I have heard that there really can be slings which dont have any change to survive. I have not seen very many theories why some breeders staff are or will become bad. Is it genetic, is there infection, dehydration or some other environmental factor during some stage of development why they are destined to die. Of course i have read about different reproduction strategies where only small part brood will survive.

In my case, i still thought that it would be sensible to assume that i’m just doing something wrong. Maybe something could come up if i try different things and make questions. Then i could at least say that i have tried to do my best.

I am aware that P. reidyi has wide distribution area with southern limit in the Amazon. Therefore i have kept most of them in pretty humid environment. I have also used plastic plants because I noticed soon their tendency to climb.

Completely new thing that came up in this thread was to try better nutrition. According to previous, old information which i heard they could be raised with fruit flies. I didn’t question this information at all. Hopefully this is reason for my problems.

So, from now on i try to feed them with small, freshly killed pinhead crickets. Hopefully at least some will survive. It will propably take quite long time before i can get change to obtain more these if they die.

I will let you know later what happened.

[Raikiri]

Vinmann is not the best source.. He has too much invertebrates and not enough time for them so he makes mistakes.. And sometimes he offers unhelathy staff. I bought my reidyis also from him, but all of them are healthy. I think raising Phoneutria is so easy. I put them into small containers, I feed them once a week or twice a month. Sometimes their substrate become dry, but no prob. I often had no time to deal with them, and some of them have no plants to climb on. Approx. 2 months ago I feed them with fruit flies for 2-3 weeks without problems. Of course this doesn't mean that they could be fed on flies for longer periods. Anyway I think everyone should feed with different food since they require many different chemical substances.
How far do you live from Germany? Just because I'm thinking about a too long shipping. Perhaps that could weaken them a little bit.
At the moment all Phoneutria bloodlines are ok, I don't think it could be the problem.