A. urticans death curl

Three days ago I saw my A. urticans looking a little lazy. I noticed the legs seemed to be tucked under a bit and that it hadn't moved much the past few days, let alone eaten at all recently. I proceeded to decide that it needed to be put in an ICU, where it sat for 24 hours. Upon observation after the 24-hour period, it was walking around and such, so I threw in a cricket leg in hopes that it'd chow down and be A-okay. It did indeed eat, and started webbing and climbing around the ICU. I gave it another 24 hours to recover and it looked just dandy! Last night I changed the substrate and the bark, misted, and put the specimen back in its home, where it couldn't have looked happier. This morning I found it curled at the bottom. It was still alive and making tiny movements, so I put it in the freezer to put it out of its misery and buried it shortly afterwards.

Any thoughts?


Points of particular interest to me:
1) There were extraordinarily tiny black bugs around it. Are these mites?
2) The substrate was a bit dry. This is why the decision was made to put it under intensive care.

Souldn't have froze it. Also, I don't believe Ts are able to be in "misery". If it was doing this before, I would've tried the ICU again. Without pics, can't really give much advice.

Chris_Skeleton said:

Souldn't have froze it. Also, I don't believe Ts are able to be in "misery". If it was doing this before, I would've tried the ICU again. Without pics, can't really give much advice.

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If it wasn't suffering, I definitely was. It was horror just watching it be inches from death. It's gone now and I will replace it. What do mites look like?

There different types of mites. Some are good for the T and some are not. There is info about it online and probably here in the forums. Try the big search box in the top right screen. The bad mites, I believe, tend to be kinda pointy on one end or similar. I could be off on that. I also believe that it takes quite some time before an infestation will actually kill a T depending on how well the enclosure is maintained. I'm not sure on the colors of the mite exactly. Some are gray maybe or white even. As a matter of fact there is a pretty extensive chapter on this in "The Tarantula Keepers Guide". Great book btw and EXTEMELY informative. Found on Amazon is where i got mine.