Here We Go.

I currently have a presumed to be gravid female LP. I was going to be payed with her and some other Ts if I could get a successful breeding from her. I introduced the male to her and there was no interest. I left the room for maybe a minute to get an extra set of tongs and when I came back, he was missing legs and was just about dead, not eaten at all. I hadn't seen any insertions or signs of insertions on her.

Its been about 2 months since this all happened and now she's doubled in size and sits at the edge of her hide waiting for food. Any tips? Once they hatch, if they hatch, they will be put into large groups to have the population lowered.

If you get a good sac, rather than let then cannibalize, why not sell them cheap here in bulk, even give some away.

I meant more along the lines of if its a massive sac.

Ashton said:

I meant more along the lines of if its a massive sac.

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I know what you meant, LP's usually massive sacs. Rather than cannibalize/euthanize, sell what you can (to any and everybody) and give the rest to good homes. I give away some of my surplus slings, which are a lot more valuable than LP's.

Raise them to second instar popem in straws and sell them in minimums of 10 lots... Even @ $20 for 10 you can make a killing ( heck10 for 10)... Say you have a small sack 600 slings its about 450 profit after shipping supplies and straws at 10 for 10....

I have never understood why some people breed spiders just to cull the sack to a more manageable size... I think its a practice that should be heavily frowned upon...

14pokies said:

Raise them to second instar popem in straws and sell them in minimums of 10 lots... Even @ $20 for 10 you can make a killing ( heck10 for 10)... Say you have a small sack 600 slings its about 450 profit after shipping supplies and straws at 10 for 10....

I have never understood why some people breed spiders just to cull the sack to a more manageable size... I think its a practice that should be heavily frowned upon...

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Just from questions I've seen posted its a lot of people who aren't equipped, capable or want to deal with such a large number. But that's just people posting. Won't go into my opinion of don't do it if you can't handle it etc

I will take some lol

Nothing wrong with letting a little cannibalism take place to cull out the weak specimens. It is exactly what happens in nature. Tarantulas don't have hundreds of babies in expectation that all will survive. 100% survival rates only happen in captivity and IMO probably weakens the genes for future generations.

skippydude said:

Nothing wrong with letting a little cannibalism take place to cull out the weak specimens. It is exactly what happens in nature. Tarantulas don't have hundreds of babies in expectation that all will survive. 100% survival rates only happen in captivity and IMO probably weakens the genes for future generations.

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I may be wrong, but it'd seem like natural selection as it occurs in an enclosure has little relationship to what happens in nature.

MrDave said:

I may be wrong, but it'd seem like natural selection as it occurs in an enclosure has little relationship to what happens in nature.

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If the weak and crippled get eaten/culled. How does this not improve the CB bloodlines?

The genetically inferior usually die off... why do you think some t's just die? Not inbreeding helps our cb speciemens.

skippydude said:

If the weak and crippled get eaten/culled. How does this not improve the CB bloodlines?

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They're being selected for different strengths than they would in the wild. I'm not sure what those strengths would be, but they'd not be selected for their ability to run away, or hide from birds, rodents, other spiders.

Thats fine - people have been breeding pets for as long as there have been people, but the selection criteria are different than in nature. Its not really exactly what happens in nature. I'm probably nitpicking just a bit.

The gene pool for most CB specimens is so limited it is impossible to not inbreed. Almost all of our T's came from a limited number of WC specimens which are illegal to harvest now, so where does new blood come from? Besides tarantulas are different than mammals in many ways, they don't produce mongoloid babies from mating their cousins , I have yet to see a study where inbreeding tarantulas causes any harm.

skippydude said:

The gene pool for most CB specimens is so limited it is impossible to not inbreed. Almost all of our T's came from a limited number of WC specimens which are illegal to harvest now, so where does new blood come from? Besides tarantulas are different than mammals in many ways, they don't produce mongoloid babies from mating their cousins , I have yet to see a study where inbreeding tarantulas causes any harm.

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Nor have I, re inbreeding.

The idea of how selection applies to CB spiders is kinda interesting. If you look at the price of spiders, and consider markets and buying and selling etc., what are we selecting for when we breed spiders? LPs because they breed in large numbers and so are cheap? Or pretty blue spiders? Orange spiders that breed in large numbers and are also cheap?

I feel like although a degree of inbreeding can't be avoided, since much of our collections originate with relatively few imports, care should be taken to avoid direct inbreeding between sac mates, and maybe a few generations. The main reason being the way genes work. Inbreeding tends to cause genetic abnormalities to occur because there is a higher likelyhood of two recessive alleles (coding for negative traits) pairing up during fertilization. For example, imagine if some fantasy eukaryotic multicelled organism, who was heterozygous (lets say Rr) for a recessive bad gene that encoded a wrong type of enzyme that didnt properly beak down sugar into glucose and fructose (the dominant gene keeps the recessive trait from showing, so this specimen still produces the proper enzyme), mates with a male who is homozygous for the proper gene(RR). 100% of the offspring will produce the normal exzyme.
But let's say our fantasy creature mated with a broodmate, one who also expresses the Rr genotype (since the likelyhood of that increases with siblings). Roughly 25% of the babies will express the wrong enzyme. Even though we don't seem to have much evidence of this going on in our collections, there's still always a chance. A system of watching for sibling relations and culling should be in place to preserve the integrity of our spiders' phenotypes, especially considering some of these gene pools cannot be supplemented with fresh blood anymore, due to importation laws, extinction, etc.

skippydude said:

If the weak and crippled get eaten/culled. How does this not improve the CB bloodlines?

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In captivity there is no way to determine which are being eaten...yes, it sounds great and even logical that the stronger would eat the weaker, but that's no guarantee. All, even the weak, are capable of taking one of their siblings should the situation fall that way, as the one being aggressive usually wins out. Think of this, the stronger are likely molting more often, in this case, the strongest specimens are left vulnerable to consumption by ANY sling that happens by when the are molting. That happens and the genetics are actually being made weaker as the strong molt and get eaten by weaker, smaller specimens.

So it is possible for cannibalization to have an adverse effect...I'm sure it doesn't always happen this way, but its certainly possible when kept in close quarters where escape (dispersion) is made impossible. I'd think in the wild the strongest would also be the first to disperse.

skippydude said:

If the weak and crippled get eaten/culled. How does this not improve the CB bloodlines?

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There's a diff between weak crippled getting culled out, vs intentionally crowding and not feeding for forced cannibalism to "lower" the number you have to deal with

---------- Post added 03-19-2015 at 07:36 PM ----------

cold blood said:

In captivity there is no way to determine which are being eaten...yes, it sounds great and even logical that the stronger would eat the weaker, but that's no guarantee. All, even the weak, are capable of taking one of their siblings should the situation fall that way, as the one being aggressive usually wins out. Think of this, the stronger are likely molting more often, in this case, the strongest specimens are left vulnerable to consumption by ANY sling that happens by when the are molting. That happens and the genetics are actually being made weaker as the strong molt and get eaten by weaker, smaller specimens.

So it is possible for cannibalization to have an adverse effect...I'm sure it doesn't always happen this way, but its certainly possible when kept in close quarters where escape (dispersion) is made impossible. I'd think in the wild the strongest would also be the first to disperse.

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I have to say I lean towards agreeing with cold blood on this. The stronger faster growers will molt first and be vulnerable to being prayed on by the smaller siblings