Sana
Arachnoprince
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2014
- Messages
- 1,139
Hey everybody. Sorry to say I haven't been around much lately. I return once again seeking words of wisdom from more experienced keepers. I'm concerned that I may have a dead H. maculata sling, though the reasons I'm concerned seem a little vague as I'm thinking about them. Maybe someone can give me the piece of information that will help me know if I have an empty container or a just a normal spider.
I received the sling in January of this year and put it into a plastic peanut container with a couple dozen 1/32 inch holes drilled in each side for ventilation and a few in the top lid. The sling was 1/2" at the time. The substrate is store brand topsoil with no additives chemical or organic and a small amount of sphagnum moss mixed in since I live in a dry climate and I have had success with keeping humidity a bit higher and more stable this way. The container is about 2/3 full of sub with bark and plastic plants to offer lots of hide options. The sling has a 20 oz soda bottle cap of water and has been fed crickets both live and prekilled, as well as mealworm chunks. I use a syringe to dampen alternating spots of the substrate once or twice a week depending on the relative humidity in the room as a whole that week. I have a second sling from the same sac in an identical setup on the shelf beside the one I'm worried about and it's thriving.
The maculata I'm concerned about hasn't been seen since it was put in the container. Some webbing and obvious burrowing showed up within the first week and was added to or altered for the first month. It threw a molt out of it's burrow about a month after it arrived. About two months ago prey stopped disappearing when it was put in live or placed at the mouth of the borrow prekilled. Previously a couple weeks of prey being untouched was just considered a signal of a molt taking place. This is the first time that it has been this long without touching a single prey item. Nothing about the borrow or web has changed noticeably. I just can't see anything that makes me think there is something alive in there but it doesn't smell bad or strange. I realize that I offered a sling of a notoriously shy species the ability to burrow as it pleased and that it's a spider and prone to do things that I find strange and make me worry.
Even if they die in a burrow they're supposed to smell like a dead mouse right?
I received the sling in January of this year and put it into a plastic peanut container with a couple dozen 1/32 inch holes drilled in each side for ventilation and a few in the top lid. The sling was 1/2" at the time. The substrate is store brand topsoil with no additives chemical or organic and a small amount of sphagnum moss mixed in since I live in a dry climate and I have had success with keeping humidity a bit higher and more stable this way. The container is about 2/3 full of sub with bark and plastic plants to offer lots of hide options. The sling has a 20 oz soda bottle cap of water and has been fed crickets both live and prekilled, as well as mealworm chunks. I use a syringe to dampen alternating spots of the substrate once or twice a week depending on the relative humidity in the room as a whole that week. I have a second sling from the same sac in an identical setup on the shelf beside the one I'm worried about and it's thriving.
The maculata I'm concerned about hasn't been seen since it was put in the container. Some webbing and obvious burrowing showed up within the first week and was added to or altered for the first month. It threw a molt out of it's burrow about a month after it arrived. About two months ago prey stopped disappearing when it was put in live or placed at the mouth of the borrow prekilled. Previously a couple weeks of prey being untouched was just considered a signal of a molt taking place. This is the first time that it has been this long without touching a single prey item. Nothing about the borrow or web has changed noticeably. I just can't see anything that makes me think there is something alive in there but it doesn't smell bad or strange. I realize that I offered a sling of a notoriously shy species the ability to burrow as it pleased and that it's a spider and prone to do things that I find strange and make me worry.
Even if they die in a burrow they're supposed to smell like a dead mouse right?