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Advice for breeding Brazilian Black pair

dirtyfo

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Hey guys, new to the forum. Seems like a great place for information and some advice! I was inquiring if anyone on here had any advice/suggestions on breeding Grammostola Pulchras. (Brazilian Black) I have a male that’s about 3 years old and was about to buy a female here on the forum. This will be my first attempt at breeding so any advice will go a long way. Thanks everyone!
 

Arachnoclown

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It's one of the tricky species to get a successful sack. Timing and the cooling down period is the hardest part. If you don't already have a female and know her cycle your already too far behind if your male is already or close to mature. My advice would be to get a female and learn her cycle. This will take well over a year. You could just get lucky and all the stars line up for you. Maybe @Casey K. Has some tips.
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Casey K.

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The female has to go through a 6 month cooling period. If you can't simulate this species environment just right, it is quite difficult to produce a sac.
 

dirtyfo

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How would I learn her cycle? Is there only certain times she will mate? What happens if you left a male/female in a large tank together for a long time? How old do the tarantulas have to be to mate? How many slings can a sac produce? Like I said, first time trying to breed so a bunch of questions haaha!
 

Arachnoclown

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How would I learn her cycle? Is there only certain times she will mate? What happens if you left a male/female in a large tank together for a long time? How old do the tarantulas have to be to mate? How many slings can a sac produce? Like I said, first time trying to breed so a bunch of questions haaha!
You need to know her molting cycle. All females are different because of their age. Young females may molt once a year and older females may be 2-3 years. The optimum time for breeding is 6 months after molting, any time after that she may be starting to grow her new exoskeleton. Then you also have to cool her down in that same period after she molts. To make it even more difficult the male has to be freshly mature within 4-5 months that she hits all those periods. You can't just put a male in with her for a long period of time and hope the best. She will kill him. Egg sacks very from species to species. Some sacks may produce as little as 40 to as high as 1600. Tarantula females have to have a dark spermatheca to be old enough to breed. Males have to have had their ultimate molt.
 

Arachnoclown

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All very interesting! I am not planning on breeding Ts but there is still lots for me to learn about them.
It's not for newbies for sure. I waited over 30 years before jumping into Breeding. I learned the basics over the years. I just needed minimal help when the time came. Mostly reassuring myself asking questions I already knew. I aquired a few sacks from hobbiests over the years so I had experience tending to slings. Breeding is the easy part. Caring for 1000s of slings is where it gets rough. Sounds like alot of fun but trust me it's alot of work. Easiest species to breed is Avicularia avicularia. Start with that is my advice.
 

Casey K.

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It's not for newbies for sure. I waited over 30 years before jumping into Breeding. I learned the basics over the years. I just needed minimal help when the time came. Mostly reassuring myself asking questions I already knew. I aquired a few sacks from hobbiests over the years so I had experience tending to slings. Breeding is the easy part. Caring for 1000s of slings is where it gets rough. Sounds like alot of fun but trust me it's alot of work. Easiest species to breed is Avicularia avicularia. Start with that is my advice.

Amen to that! Caring for all the slings is very time consuming! Back in 2015 I had over 1,000 tarantulas to feed. Not including the sacs incubating. Took me 3 days every week to feed them all (I pretty much power fed back then).
 

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