Best food to feed slings?

PensRule

Arachnosquire
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Pine head crickets is the obvious answer but is there anything else.How about legs from the adult crickets?
 

Hedorah99

Arachnoprince
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Pine head crickets is the obvious answer but is there anything else.How about legs from the adult crickets?
fruit flies are good if you can get some wingless or flightless colonies going. I also raise a very small breed of meal worms. The smaller ones are perfect for slings.
 

vvx

Arachnobaron
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Legs from adult crickets work fine and many rely on that and other prekilled foods for their slings because they don't have local access to pinheads/etc. You can also just toss in whole prekilled crickets, you just need to remove the left overs in a day or so.
 

AubZ

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I use prekilled as I don't want the cric or worm to hurt my lil baby. I also don't see a chance of playing with pinheads. Just too small.
 

Talkenlate04

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fruit flies are good if you can get some wingless or flightless colonies going. I also raise a very small breed of meal worms. The smaller ones are perfect for slings.
Good god almighty, I think I would rather pull out my hair then try fruit flies again. Little "flightless" boogers. They can walk/run faster then they could have ever flown. :wall: For every one that made it into the container and was killed by a T, 30 were running all over my desk.


Meal worms though those are great! And aphids too for tiny slings.
 

Drachenjager

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Good god almighty, I think I would rather pull out my hair then try fruit flies again. Little "flightless" boogers. They can walk/run faster then they could have ever flown. :wall: For every one that made it into the container and was killed by a T, 30 were running all over my desk.
ROTFLOL i bet that was fun !!!!!!!lol
 

-Sarah-

Arachnobaron
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Pinheads totally frustrate me - and I swear they have better aim than a jumping spider! :wall: Even with my 1/4" slings I use pre-killed small/medium crickets. I just collect them in a disposable sandwich baggie, quickly smash their heads to kill them (or some could freeze them, I've never tried), break every leg to they won't flail around if they're still moving, and finally I cut them in half (some slings will get heads, some slings will get "tails"! {D) Some might consider this gross, but it's been a tried-and-true method for me!

-Sarah
 

Hedorah99

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Am I the only one that didn't have problems with fruit flies? I had up to three colonies going at once and had a pretty good hold of being able to put one or two in a jar or vial at any given time.
 

jbrd

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Am I the only one that didn't have problems with fruit flies? I had up to three colonies going at once and had a pretty good hold of being able to put one or two in a jar or vial at any given time.
What technique did you use to transfer the fruit flies?
 

Le Wasp

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For dealing with fast, fairly tiny feeders, I would recommend using something called an aspirator. A lot of entomologists use these for collecting in the field. Basically, it's a tube that you suck up insects into. There's a fine screen inside the tubing that prevents you from inhaling the insects :) They're pretty easy to make. I use one for catching the baby crickets and singly putting them into the tarantula containers. If you have a lot of slings, I think having an aspirator would be a great help -- just suck up a bunch into the tube, and shoot a few into each container.
 

Talkenlate04

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Am I the only one that didn't have problems with fruit flies? I had up to three colonies going at once and had a pretty good hold of being able to put one or two in a jar or vial at any given time.
They were good feeders when I could get them in to the desired containers. I could get them to reproduce easy enough to.

How were you transferring them? Do you have a secret? I had to open the stocking top of the jar and they would all rush at me like soccer fans mobbing a field after a home team loss. :8o
 

Hedorah99

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They were good feeders when I could get them in to the desired containers. I could get them to reproduce easy enough to.

How were you transferring them? Do you have a secret? I had to open the stocking top of the jar and they would all rush at me like soccer fans mobbing a field after a home team loss. :8o
I would just hit the conatiner against the table to knock them all down to the bottom. Then open the vial and shake one or two out. Seemed to work pretty good. You can also anesthetize them with CO2. Put an alka seltzer in a vial with some water and a rubber stopper with some aquarium tubing coming out. the gas escaping is pure CO2 and slows them down a lot.
 

Nerri1029

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I cut adult crix, cut wax worms and cut roach nymphs.

I've used adult legs as well.

I tried pinheads, and will NEVER EVER ( not even at gun point ) try them again. Like the fruit fly mention above for every one that made it to a sling 20-30 died, escaped or were mashed by my clumsy efforts.
 

bushbuster

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Pinheads are a pain in the AZZ. I tried and tried to use 'em, they just kept dying. I have 2 lil 1/4" Brachys, geez what a nightmare trying to take care of these guys. Best luck I've had with their food is lil mealy worms, cut in 1/2.
 

Fenrir

Arachnosquire
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Fruit flies are beyond easy IME just tap the top of the container a few times real good then shake a few into another container filled w/ calcium dust, they cant climb things when they are dusted and u can just slowly tap a few out per sling then tap all the unused ones into the culture. Calcium dust is key otherwise they go everywhere when in the container. Dont forget to swirl the container they are in every few secs to make sure they remain dusted while feeding.

But as Hedorah99 said earlier knocking those flies down makes a huge difference.
 

Stylopidae

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I would just hit the conatiner against the table to knock them all down to the bottom. Then open the vial and shake one or two out. Seemed to work pretty good. You can also anesthetize them with CO2. Put an alka seltzer in a vial with some water and a rubber stopper with some aquarium tubing coming out. the gas escaping is pure CO2 and slows them down a lot.
Brilliant!
 

Pulk

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I'm not using FFs because I had problems raising them, but transfering them was fine. Just dumped out a few on my bed (has to be a soft surface) and grabbed them up individually. Their exoskeletons are harder than they look (and these were melanogaster), and they didn't seem too fast to me.
 

Talkenlate04

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I would just hit the conatiner against the table to knock them all down to the bottom. Then open the vial and shake one or two out. Seemed to work pretty good. You can also anesthetize them with CO2. Put an alka seltzer in a vial with some water and a rubber stopper with some aquarium tubing coming out. the gas escaping is pure CO2 and slows them down a lot.
Ahh see now I see my problem. I had my cultures going in small mayo jars. So my time between thumping them down and them climbing out was seconds.
I might have to try that C02 deal........ Sounds fun {D
 
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