When can spiderlings be shipped?

Also, at what point would it be safe to ship spiderlings? Not doing it for $ but just to give them decent homes. I have a lot of 2 week old spiderlings of Hogna carolinensis. I have no experience shipping them. Any hints/tricks?

should be above 30-35 degrees F and you should use a heat pack unless above 60 degrees
not sure the size of your spiderlings but each may be put into a small vial or if they are small enough, round em up into a straw and seperate with a staple between them if using vials, each vial should be lined with barely moist paper towel, tp, ect. Leave little 'cave' in middle for em to climb into and on to be safe in the vials for shipping.
have to ship overnight (give or take $35) if cold like it is

Styrofoam in the container really helps too. Seems like things are going to be warming up soon though, so you'll be able to ship without styrofoam in no time! Carolinensis are pretty hardy too, right? I've had other true spiders shipped to me recently with just a heat pack and them wrapped up in newspaper and they came through just fine.

While this is technically on the shippee, try not to send a sling that's about to molt. Slings are more sensitive when molting, so there's a higher chance that they'll die if they molt in transit. That being said, I have heard plenty of stories of people that have received spiders that molted in the mail and arrived without any problems. I think at two weeks old, you should be able to ship them in straws pretty easily.

Looks like i now have a lot fewer. I went to a conference. I heavily seeded the tanks with fruit flies thinking all would be well. I estimate there are now less than half. Not sure whether predation, death from the flies, or bad molt or all of the above. I hope to start segregating them tomorrow.

I'm betting there was a fair amount of cannibalism. Fruit flies aren't predaceous, so I wouldn't worry about that. There was a thread that popped up here on AB recently that talked about feeding lycosids fruit flies only ends in nearly 100% mortality unless the flies are gut loaded, so that may be worth looking for.

Thanks. My bad...I meant predation by the siblings.

I did see the thread you mentioned about FFF feeding and mortality. They may have had some of the adults from regular food early on but for about the last 5 days or so had FFFs from food where dog food had been added. Might be a little late?

pannaking22 said:

I'm betting there was a fair amount of cannibalism. Fruit flies aren't predaceous, so I wouldn't worry about that. There was a thread that popped up here on AB recently that talked about feeding lycosids fruit flies only ends in nearly 100% mortality unless the flies are gut loaded, so that may be worth looking for.

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It's not gutloading the flies actually but rising the larvae in a more nutrient rich medium affects the values of the adult flies, even if the flies are starved so they're gut in empty.

Hypochilus said:

Thanks. My bad...I meant predation by the siblings.

I did see the thread you mentioned about FFF feeding and mortality. They may have had some of the adults from regular food early on but for about the last 5 days or so had FFFs from food where dog food had been added. Might be a little late?

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Hmmm, it could be. I'm not really sure though.

Hanska said:

It's not gutloading the flies actually but rising the larvae in a more nutrient rich medium affects the values of the adult flies, even if the flies are starved so they're gut in empty.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the correction, Hanska I wrote that down and it didn't sound right, but I had to run off to a meeting before I could think of the right way to put it.