Two questions. (A. geniculata)

#1 Am I letting it get too plump? I keep it on the same regimen as the rest simply for ease of scheduling, but it is more advanced in age, plus it of course gets larger prey so I'm wondering if it is getting a bit to heavy and if I should reduce it to less frequent feedings than the rest of the gang, which are not showing weight issues. At the time of the photo, it is eating a cricket, which was when I realized it seems a bit on the plump side and that I perhaps should have withheld the cricket.

#2 It is looking a little cramped in there. I was planning on waiting until after the next moult (it appears it may be heading in the direction of pre-moult now) but i can do it sooner. His little "latrine" in the corner is bugging me as well,(that's not mould, it's poo) but I don't think it is a big enough issue to worry about cleaning out since a change of enclosures is imminent in a month probably at most, sooner if the verdict is that I should go ahead and bump it up to sooner than later. I figure the irritation of a cleaning and then a complete change shortly after would just be stressing it unnecessarily.

Oh, and that is fresh water, just refilled yesterday. I've about given up on it remaining pristine for more than a few hours.

Genics love to eat, getting plump triggers molts, so it's not a problem with slings/juveniles. It could use a bigger cage.

Try sinking the water bowl part way into the substrate.

Thanks. They sure do like to eat, for sure. And I've not seen one that can so quickly sense prey like they can. Of course my sample size of species is pretty small.
You can't see it due to the spider, but on the other side of it is another water cap that I sank into the substrate. The genic buried most of it, which is why I decided to try leaving the other one sitting atop the substrate.That has worked marginally better, but I can sink the second one also to see what happens.

I dunno, I think waterbowls are just doomed to grossness. Not much to be done about it.

Tim Benzedrine said:

Thanks. They sure do like to eat, for sure. And I've not seen one that can so quickly sense prey like they can.

Click to expand...

There are some that sense and react very quickly to prey, especially the big South Americans. I've put crickets in with hungry Aphonopelma chalcodes, and they're much slower to figure out a cricket is in with them. It's like: 'Hmmm. What is that, something crawling around in here? I think I'll mosey over and take a look.'

Poec54 said:

There are some that sense and react very quickly to prey, especially the big South Americans. I've put crickets in with hungry Aphonopelma chalcodes, and they're much slower to figure out a cricket is in with them. It's like: 'Hmmm. What is that, something crawling around in here? I think I'll mosey over and take a look.'

Click to expand...

I think the Aphonopelmas are the three-toed sloths of the tarantula world.

DamonVikki said:

I think the Aphonopelmas are the three-toed sloths of the tarantula world.

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Certainly not as alert as most tropicals.

How big is that guy Tim?

I am a terrible judge of measurements, so I'm not sure yet of the leg span. I think its body length is about 2 1/2 inches, though.

I decided to go ahead with the rehousing today. The cramped look was bugging me. That is freshly reconstituted eco-earth, I dampened it as little as possible during the process and added a little bit of bone-dry remainder from the last batch. It isn't as soaking wet as it appears, but it is going to have to dry naturally. And after all of that, I forgot to change the water cap! I just moved it over intending to take it out, clean and refill. Doh! But I didn't want to disturb it again so I left it as is. The water should be satisfactorily fresh, but the substrate remains. I'll change it out tomorrow.

By the way, I stuck a ventral shot in the sexing forum. I don't know if it is sharp enough, and I know it isn't as reliable, but I haven't been able to get a good moult yet, so if anybody wants to take a swing at it, go for it.

Here, I'll make it easy to find...

http://www.arachnoboards.com/ab/gallery/showimage.php?i=37791&c=9

Looks like shes about to molt too.. But agree with poec, being so youg mine was on a 1 male dubia monday n a lrg nymph thurs/fri schedual when she was that size she was happy and so was i... So ling as abd aint dragging ur fine (again just imo) you still got 3 or 4 molts befor you gota worry about overfeeding if you ask me ^_^

Yeah, it is definitely entering moult territory. I'll just keep it on the same schedule as the others for the time being.

By the way, I located another "snake measurer". I'd been using the online serpent widget one, but it doesn't seem to be working for me anymore. so, I located a stand-alone to download that works the same way. If anybody is interested I'll provide the link. Should be a safe source, and it's open source. Using it, I get 3.6 in measurement, depending on how I draw the measuring line. A straight shot gives me 3.6, following the contour of the leh and body gains about half of a unit. I am presuming a unit equals 1 inch, but I haven't seen that explicitly stated yet. Here it is if anybody wants to play with it. It may not be absolutely accurate, but is probably as good as eye-balling and estimating, and a picture of a spider is a lot more cooperative than the real thing.


http://sourceforge.net/projects/snakemt/