Sweet odor coming from L. hesperus enclosure

[Arachne]

Hi all,
I have 2 female L. hesperus - one baby (about 1/4 inch) and a sub-adult, who is about an inch. The sub-adult is in a 5-gal luxury palace and I have the baby in one of those fish (usually for bettas) containers for now, until she gets bigger.

I transferred the baby from a small jar into the fish cup last weekend. I put peat moss in the very bottom and then covered that with rocks and stuck in a few sticks for her to climb on. Once I put her in there, she made a little web right away and then moulted. I found a tiny cricket to feed her and after a few days she caught him and fattened up a bit. Everything seemed fine as she adapted to her new enclosure. Well, when I went to check on her last night, I noticed a very strong sweet smell coming from her container.

I have no idea what this could be - I've read about the nematode infections with Ts, but she is more or less CB (I got her from the egg sac of a widow who lives freely on my sun porch (inside the house). She seems fine - was working on her web last night and drank a little water. I'm just wondering if this is something I should worry about. Any thoughts?

:confused:
Ara

[looseyfur]

if you still have the bag of peat give it a smell... odds are its the peat that smells that way I have noticed that before.

have fun...
feel free to send me any baby widows so I can experience the smell for myself if it is in fact not the peat at all.


whoo-
loooooooosey

[JonDaAzn]

could it be from the jar? I was recently checking out my spider enclosure and found out it smelled like spaghetti sauce

[swatc1h]

ehhe could be that jars that tend to be for food products mostly always have a scent even after washing it many times to rid it. Or the dead cricket rotten away maybe the smell :)

[swatc1h]

Wait i my have never used peat moss but my little red bishopi two of which contained that have Sphagnum Moss smells kinda sweet. weird huh yeah i may think it will have to with the substrate you n i use :)

[Arachne]

The smell actually started when I moved her out of the jar (I think it was a salsa jar) and into the little plastic fish cup (brand new, from the pet store). I took the cricket carcass out yesterday and the smell seems to be a little less overpowering now.

I'm pretty sure it's not the peat moss because I've got that in another tank and it smells fine there, and I also checked the original bag, and there was no smell other than dirt. Hopefully, nothing will happen, the spider will be fine, and it will just turn out to be one of those weird occurences.

Thanks for all of the replies! :)
Ara