Bambu
Arachnopeon
- Joined
- Jan 4, 2016
- Messages
- 33
Thank you for the long and detailed post, I needed to hear all that. I do feel I am going a bit too fast, I'm a very excitable person and this hobby really "clicked" with me I suppose. I'll wait until my current Ts grow up before testing myself with an arboreal.Yeah, you might be jumping the gun just a bit. If the B. albopilosum was your first tarantula, and after only four months you've jumped - in less than a week - from one tarantula to five, that is moving pretty quickly. It might be prudent to exercise a little caution and take it slower now while you become accustomed to keeping multiple tarantulas and accommodating their individual needs. Give them time to put on a little size - and give yourself a chance to become acquainted with their moods and behaviors.
All of the species you've selected are beautiful spiders and are not notoriously aggressive or defensive - but as they grow, you may find that they can be a bit temperamental. Some may be hair kickers while others may go into a threat posture or even try to bite your tongs. No matter what the "typical" temperament is for a given species, individual spiders will have their own personalities - and can experience dramatic mood swings, either gradually over the course of their lifetime or in a relatively short time span.
Once you do move up to arboreals, you need to be prepared for their speed. They can move unbelievably quickly and can run/teleport out of their enclosures - or even up your arm - when you are trying to feed them, refill water dishes, or clean their cages. Depending on the spider selected, venom may also be an issue.
There's no set time period or required rite of passage for transitioning from terrestrial to arboreal species - or even from NW to OW. It all depends on you, your comfort level, your experience, and your knowledge of the spiders you will be working with. Of course, building experience and a reasonable level of comfort/confidence in dealing with tarantulas can only come with time - and with having to deal with the occasional misadventure, such as having to chase down an escaped spider. If they are all perfectly behaved little slings who sit docilely in their cages while you perform your required tasks and never posture, bolt, or flick hairs, then you won't learn as much about how to handle problems when they arise. It's only over time - and with repetition of the regular maintenance plus the occasional rehousing - that you really get a solid feel for what the spiders are capable of - and how you are going to handle any situations that might arise. It's better to go slow - and be ready (or at least as ready as you can be) - than to dive in all at once and then discover that you're in over your head.
My personal progression with tarantulas was to start with a B. albopilosum sling followed by an adult G. rosea within the year. After the B. albopilosum had matured, I purchased an A. versicolor sling - my first arboreal. I waited until that one was sub-adult before progressing to my first (and - so far - only) OW, P. vittata (also a sling). That one is now also full grown or very nearly so, and I recently got a juvenile P. irminia. (While the pokie may have the more potent venom, he's a big chicken and runs and hides every time I get too close. The P. irminia, on the other hand, goes into a threat posture when I walk past its cage - and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it tried to bolt one of these days when I had to open the cage. We have, however, gotten through our first rehousing without incident.)