Adventures in Baby Arachnids

I have had a bit of captive hatch (wild caught mom that was not bred by me) and captive bred luck this year for the sort of non-standard arachnids and thought i would share it with the hobby.


First off are baby solpugids. These are captive hatched from a WC female my brother caught in Tucson, AZ, USA.


2012, late June
The female had laid eggs as her last gasp about one month prior to these pictures being taken. She was kept in a moderately high ventilation container with relatively dry substrate. When we found her dead with ~20 eggs scattered on the top of the substrate i decided to try and hatch the eggs using a calculated neglect method. basically, i left the eggs on the sub and sprayed the substrate (but NOT the eggs, themselves) every few days. i was shooting for keeping the substrate between slightly wet and almost completely dry. The eggs started out more translucent and became more and more opaque as the weeks progressed

2012, July 28
I had almost given up on the eggs being viable, but my rule with bugstuff is to keep trying until the subject is stinky or crunchy.. so i went through the motions of watering but without any real hope... THEN i found this





2012, August 3
Over about a week 11 of the 20 eggs hatched out!



2012, August 7
after around 10 days the first hatched molted into their next instar. The previous instar was nonmotile (didn't move around) but this new instar could run around a bit




the most advanced specimen was starting to look like a really real solpugid



at this point, i still didn't have any real solid evidence the critters were eating but they did seem to be somewhat interested in roach parts


2012, August 11
Still not clearly eating



2012, August 25
Finally, after hatching about a month ago, the babies starting very definitely eating!





proof is in the eating of the pudding



I'm going to make a youtube eventually, but i wanted to share my success and methods to obtain it. Stay tuned to see how this turns out

That is very very awesome man. Congrats. Youve hatched out something thats very hard to. I was debating on getting a large number of these, and trying some housing/feeding/watering experiments, to try and help narrow down ways to keep them alive longest, get them to mate, and actually have young that live. Please keep us updated.

This is valuable information, and would definitely help give some insight on the future of solfugids in captivity.

Amazing stuff! Keep doing what you're doing!

What a rare opportunity. Good luck caring for the little guys. Keep up the good work and please keep us posted!

very cool Andrew...very cool indeed

Well done! I tried making a tiny sling-style incubator for these and got nothing but hard candy.

That's very cool, Caco! Good thing that you persevered! Thanks for posting that!

Wow, that is amazing to see!

so, down to brass tacks

as you can see from the Aug 03, 2012 pic these solis are being kept in ~16 oz deli cups with around 40 pin holes poked in the lid. this cage was used in monsoon season in a swamp cooled little house in Tucson, AZ, over roughly a month as eggs and almost another month until they ate. it will be a formidble task to make general rules to get various species to stable instars

WOW!!! Keep up the great work and keep us updated. Ton

great job caco, well done. thanks for the documentation as well.

This may sound moronic but... Could the OP change the title of this thread to something definitive that could be easily searched for future reference??

there is going to be more baby arachnid pictures in here, eventually. the title has just the right scope for what the thread will eventually contain. and no, after 24h the OP can't change anything, actually

That is quite the accomplishment! The very reason I haven't kept any is the very small portion of information there is out there for care in captivity and most especially breeding. I'd some day like to keep some of those very fuzzy ones I saw in pictures. There are even black ones.

so many sweet exotics and local USA species! i talked with a guy at Ken the Bug Guy's shop who said he had kept them and gotten babies to eat baby spiders from sacs he ripped open... but i think he might have only been trying live feeding. if he comes in again, i am totally going to ask him a few questions now that i have had time to think

also, one fairly terrible thing is that i am in native range (and in fact just a very few miles away from birth site) of these specimens' mother, so EVERYTHING is going to be a million times easier for me compared to like, anyone who lives more than a couple hundred miles away. if we can crack the local code than any achievements with one particular species will pale into inconsequentiality

September 2, 2012
Evidence that the baby solpugids are molting into the next instar


old skin suit

also, that white ball is very interesting to me right now (far right and very out of focus). i need to do more reading but i think it might be full of poo and indicate a sort of incompletely developed GI tract at the last instar. no idea, though






the new fast



the new fast ending its fast










And Now For Something Completely Different
6-8 months ago my brother and i mated a pair of WC Paraphyrnus mexicanus, Mexican tailless whipscorpions and got some babies out of the mom. I have vid and pic of the mating but it is on an external hdd i need to rehook up to my computer. I am going to make a youtube of it all, eventually.


May 17, 2012
mated this girl 4-5 months prior to this picture





July 29, 2012
2.5 months later the eggs have turned into nymphs!



July 31, 2012
the babies have finished eclosing and are riding around on mom. took them out for a photoshoot... they might be in a bug book one day, now!

i played with this girl a fair amount and she was pretty good about walking on me... she ended up "voluntarily" walking up my arm when i was wrangling her for the shoot. the lens in my hand is how i take pictures of bugs with a basic ~$100 PAS digicam



August 7, 2012 (this is the date on the folder i uploaded to, i think the pictures were taken a few days before, but i am not sure)
my brother took these pictures while i held the flashlight and cage




August 8, 2012
unforntunately after i recaged after the shoot i forgot that the critters were in a much higher ventilation cage and dry killed all but four. two of those four succumbed to damage within a day or two. they babies had dispersed off their mom by now and were separated



August 25, 2012
the babies are vicious hunters and will take crickets about ~1/4 to 1/3 their size. the babies seem to ignore prekilled food, which is annoying

So hard to find. The fact that you got a pair and offspring is damned cool and like finding a rare flower in an abandoned urban lot. These are the reason I haunt in ground water utility boxes when everything outside is crispy & hot. Here's hoping you finagle a 2nd gen. out these.

Very cool thread...I'll most definitely be keeping an eye on this one.

Threads like these deserve a subscription button...