- Joined
- Sep 21, 2006
- Messages
- 666
soooooo... among the spiders i picked up from Big Al's last week was an h. maculata.. this 5"+ arboreal lady was in a 2.5 Gal, and so i decided she'd be much happier in an 18" upright exo-terra! oh yes, i named her "mawusi", as i have a habit of giving my pets names from their country or regions of origin.
having received the heads-up from shane that these things are so damn fast that if it escaped, i'd never catch it again, i decided to get "innovative"...
i needed to move it into a temporary housing jar, in order do get some of the branches and wood from its old house into its new one... the temporary house was filled with a small amount of damp substrate, just to keep it comfortably humid. not that it was in there for a long time, only 30 minutes or so.
i then constructed a sealed "passageway" from the original tank (left) to the holding jar (right).
before connecting the passage:
passage connected:
so then, using a tapered chopstick (the kind you usually find in japanese restaurants rather than chinese), i punctured the "passage" (a fairly heavy-duty plastic bag, from "Kitchen Stuff Plus" in this case), on the end near the T's tank.
after less than a minute of bothering the T with the tip of the chopstick, she scurried across the passage:
at this point, i squeezed the neck of the passage:
and disconnected it from the main tank...
closing the jar:
and after pulling the bag out, we have a safe tarantula keeper (me), and a safe if somewhat annoyed T:
now, putting her into the new home was slightly trickier... since i couldn't really put the newly arranged terrarium on its side!
so i just opened the front doors, put the jar up to it, took the lid off, and gently ushered mawusi into her new home. i found it useful to guide her by pushing her gently on the side of the cephalothorax between various pairs of legs. in this way, i could more-or-less precisely control the direction in which she went.
note, just before she got out of the jar, she totally attacked my chopstick, but then jumped off and onto the plants.
here she is after the ordeal:
sorry i don't have pictures for all the steps, but some of them required both my hands (not to mention intense concentration!).
I checked up on her this morning, and she's already built a web!
cheers!
- munis
having received the heads-up from shane that these things are so damn fast that if it escaped, i'd never catch it again, i decided to get "innovative"...
i needed to move it into a temporary housing jar, in order do get some of the branches and wood from its old house into its new one... the temporary house was filled with a small amount of damp substrate, just to keep it comfortably humid. not that it was in there for a long time, only 30 minutes or so.
i then constructed a sealed "passageway" from the original tank (left) to the holding jar (right).
before connecting the passage:
passage connected:
so then, using a tapered chopstick (the kind you usually find in japanese restaurants rather than chinese), i punctured the "passage" (a fairly heavy-duty plastic bag, from "Kitchen Stuff Plus" in this case), on the end near the T's tank.
after less than a minute of bothering the T with the tip of the chopstick, she scurried across the passage:
at this point, i squeezed the neck of the passage:
and disconnected it from the main tank...
closing the jar:
and after pulling the bag out, we have a safe tarantula keeper (me), and a safe if somewhat annoyed T:
now, putting her into the new home was slightly trickier... since i couldn't really put the newly arranged terrarium on its side!
so i just opened the front doors, put the jar up to it, took the lid off, and gently ushered mawusi into her new home. i found it useful to guide her by pushing her gently on the side of the cephalothorax between various pairs of legs. in this way, i could more-or-less precisely control the direction in which she went.
note, just before she got out of the jar, she totally attacked my chopstick, but then jumped off and onto the plants.
here she is after the ordeal:
sorry i don't have pictures for all the steps, but some of them required both my hands (not to mention intense concentration!).
I checked up on her this morning, and she's already built a web!
cheers!
- munis
Last edited:
