Australian Tarantulas - One Australians Journey

[Dave Jay]

Well, I still haven't fed the tarantulas, it's been over a week, but...atm we are copping wind straight from the Antarctic, we've had the doors closed and heaters on 24/7 but still cant get the ambient temp over 15c so I doubt they are that fussed about eating.
Today was a good, if tiring day. Last weekend my wife was a bit bummed out so I text my main tarantula supplier and said if I put $65 in your bank Monday, send me something impressive for my wife. He said he had just the thing and said no more, I didn't ask, I just put the money in. When I'd asked him on Friday he had nothing I particularly wanted, unbeknown to me he'd remembered that Belinda had wanted to collect the biggest three Australian Species......
Today a nice chunky P. Goliath came in the post!!! Bigger than $50 worth, tiny slings are $25/$30. The rest of the ornaments I ordered for her from ebay months ago arrived not long after the spider. It was perfect. I put ventilation in two smaller enclosures I bought for her even though I had to choke on plastic fumes, no way I was sitting outside! She spent the day setting up enclosures and moving her spiders around and was like a kid on Christmas morning, it was great to see! ( Pictures coming )
Also, because he had said Friday, my fortnightly payday, that he hadn't the tarantulas I've been waiting for I put $75 into my scorpion suppliers account to buy the juvie Flinders Ranges he said were coming in even though I hadn't heard from him for a couple of days, I just trust people, it'd just be credit for later if he had nothing imo.
He said he'd sold all the flinders in facebook auctions so he'd do what he could, I said not to worry, we'll catch it up later.
Well today I unpacked 19 flinders ranges!!! So much more than I'd paid for! His reply when I thanked him was "I told you I'd look after you mate" and he was having none of all this thanking. Aussies are like that, thank us and we'll tell you to F off, a mate's a mate and it'll be right mate so shut the ..... up!!!
1.40 am Friday morning as I type this so pictures will come later!

and now the powers out!!!

edit again, the powers out for a few minutes and ive got huntsmans on my keyboard, cheeky buggers, I'm trying to type!

 

[Enn49]

Sounds as though your wife had a great birthday and you didn't get left out.

 

[Dave Jay]

Sounds as though your wife had a great birthday and you didn't get left out.

Oh, it wasn't her birthday, she just seemed a bit down so I wanted to cheer her up so I promised the guy the money then spent all monday recycling drink bottles to get the money to pay him without it affecting our weekly budget. On her birthday I generally have no idea what to do!

while i was typing this, i had to stop while a completely different huntsman wandered around my keyboard!

 

[Enn49]

Oh, it wasn't her birthday, she just seemed a bit down so I wanted to cheer her up so I promised the guy the money then spent all monday recycling drink bottles to get the money to pay him without it affecting our weekly budget. On her birthday I generally have no idea what to do!

while i was typing this, i had to stop while a completely different huntsman wandered around my keyboard!

Sorry, I misunderstood. What a great hubby you must be to be so considerate .
Will the huntsman be added to your collection?

 

[Dave Jay]

Sorry, I misunderstood. What a great hubby you must be to be so considerate .
Will the huntsman be added to your collection?

We keep our Huntsman collection free-range style! They're everywhere, we gave up putting them outside years ago. There must be a lot if two walked across my computer in an hour, I bet there's at least one for every picture on the wall, that seems to be their natural habitat so why put them out? I think last night they were attracted to the heat of the netbook, with the power out it got very cold very quickly, the wind was literally straight off the antarctic ice according to the Bureau of Meteorology, hopefully my animals haven't suffered too much, the power was off for about 8 and a half hours.
I do have an orange Badge Huntsman in an enclosure, it was on the kitchen bench looking very out of sorts, I think it must have had a run in with the spiders in the kitchen window frame. It seems fine now though, just unphotogenic, it scrunches up when I try to take photos.

Anyway, I thought I'd post a couple of the enclosures Belinda set up yesterday. While shopping for decor for enclosures I came across lots of miniature ornaments for terrariums and aquariums and I thought she would enjoy making miniature scenes for a giant mutant tarantula to terrorise! I have even bought miniature sheep, light posts, garden benches and lots of other bits and pieces to make miniature villages and various scenes. Not every enclosure needs to mimic nature as long as the needs of the animal are met I think, why not be whimsical now and then?

This is the new Goliath, for reference the hexagonal tank it's in is 7" across from flat side to flat side.

The peasants are doomed!!!

This is the rubiseta I bought for her that was very thin on arrival, no problem now. Ready to go boating on the lake!

 

[Enn49]

We keep our Huntsman collection free-range style! They're everywhere, we gave up putting them outside years ago. There must be a lot if two walked across my computer in an hour, I bet there's at least one for every picture on the wall, that seems to be their natural habitat so why put them out? I think last night they were attracted to the heat of the netbook, with the power out it got very cold very quickly, the wind was literally straight off the antarctic ice according to the Bureau of Meteorology, hopefully my animals haven't suffered too much, the power was off for about 8 and a half hours.
I do have an orange Badge Huntsman in an enclosure, it was on the kitchen bench looking very out of sorts, I think it must have had a run in with the spiders in the kitchen window frame. It seems fine now though, just unphotogenic, it scrunches up when I try to take photos.

Anyway, I thought I'd post a couple of the enclosures Belinda set up yesterday. While shopping for decor for enclosures I came across lots of miniature ornaments for terrariums and aquariums and I thought she would enjoy making miniature scenes for a giant mutant tarantula to terrorise! I have even bought miniature sheep, light posts, garden benches and lots of other bits and pieces to make miniature villages and various scenes. Not every enclosure needs to mimic nature as long as the needs of the animal are met I think, why not be whimsical now and then?

View attachment 29858
This is the new Goliath, for reference the hexagonal tank it's in is 7" across from flat side to flat side.
View attachment 29859
The peasants are doomed!!!
View attachment 29860 This is the rubiseta I bought for her that was very thin on arrival, no problem now. Ready to go boating on the lake!
View attachment 29861

Now I couldn't cope with that, I'm still too squeamish about spiders on the loose in the house although keeping Ts has calmed me down considerably.
I love the set up Belinda has done.

 

[Dave Jay]

Here's a few pictures of the badge Huntsman from the night I found it staggering around on the kitchen bench.
Not great pictures but all I have atm. They don't convey how vivid the orange is, but it gives some idea. One shows the "badge" quite well though.

 

[Dave Jay]

19th May - All spiders not in a closed burrow fed according to size. Details to be filled in later .
sp.2 #18 dead, no obvious cause. No difference in enclosure to 14 through 17. Moisture levels the same as the others.

 

[Dave Jay]

30th May
Stents 1,2,3 small cricket
Stents 5 medium cricket
Blue Leg 1&3 small cricket
Blue Leg 2 medium cricket
S. plumipes small-medium cricket
P. crassipes small cricket

Sp.2
1,2,3,5,7,10,11,12,13, Blocked
4,6(removed dead),8,9,14,15,16,17 small cricket.

 

[Dave Jay]

Wow, what a busy couple of weeks! Precisely why I moved to inverts though, unless there's been some unusual drying all the inverts will be ok without food for 12 days, especially as the temps have been topping out at around 18c near the enclosures. I can't say there's been much action but it wasn't much different at 25 - 30c a couple of months ago.

12th June

Geoffrey (P. crassipes) - fed small cricket
Blue Leg 2 - removed medium cricket (still alive) but added a small cricket because the abdomen was looking a bit thin. Perhaps I was premature in adding a larger cricket even though the spider has moulted in my care and looked large enough. I always add tiny piece of carrot if a cricket is not taken immediately so there's no hungry crickets with the spiders, but I doubt this one is near another moult yet. It was feeding well though, I'm surprised to see it looking a bit thin to be honest.
Blue Leg 3 - cricket gone, added sml cricket, still no sign of the spider, I think I've seen it twice since I've had it, same with BL1. BL2 I see quite a lot.
Blue Leg 1 - sml cricket.
Selenotypus plumipes "Northern Territory" - Burrow open, medium cricket still alive from 30th May. Has not moulted but still looks very plump. I put some fresh carrot in and left the cricket, it doesn't look that lively anyway.

Selenotypus "sp.2"
1, 2, 3, 4 (removed live cricket), 6, 11, 13 burrows blocked.
5*, 7, 9, 10, 12*, 15, 17 given extra small live crickets.
14 and 16 very lively, got a nice tunnel system going with a couple of entrances, given extra small crickets.
*I found a moult in number 5s enclosure under the sphagnum moss, it doesn't look very recent, almost dried to nothing and fallen apart. This sling has had it's burrow blocked for over a month, it's hard to tell now whether it is deliberately blocked atm or a bit of the "volcano" fell across the hole when moving the enclosure, or if it has just temporarily blocked it for daytime. I added a small cricket and some carrot. I'll check on things tomorrow.
*12 was hard to tell if it's burrow was supposed to be open or closed as while it was wide open it was flush against the lid. I can see the spider at the bottom of the enclosure, it looks lively and no moult visible so I removed some substrate and added an extra small cricket.

Stents
1 given small cricket
2 given small cricket
3 given small cricket
5 given medium cricket

 

[Dave Jay]

Selenotypus "sp. 2" number 5 moulted sometime, but not too recently, the moult was so dry it fell apart and drifted away just in the slight air currents in the loungeroom. I also took a pic of the "volcano", that's all I see in the majority of the sp.2 enclosures!

 

[Dave Jay]

S. sp.2 number 8 was dead. Strange that it came out in the open like that and died. It's legs didn't even look as curled as they do in the picture until I poked it in the bum, it still looked alive until then. I can tell that this was the enclosure I had trouble with the moss wicking the water out of the bowl all the time because most of the moss was removed on the 30th of May, you can still see what remains and the substrate is still more moist than in the other enclosures so I think that may have been the problem. It was still very plump as you can see, missing a meal or two would not be the cause imo.

 

[Enn49]

S. sp.2 number 8 was dead. Strange that it came out in the open like that and died. It's legs didn't even look as curled as they do in the picture until I poked it in the bum, it still looked alive until then. I can tell that this was the enclosure I had trouble with the moss wicking the water out of the bowl all the time because most of the moss was removed on the 30th of May, you can still see what remains and the substrate is still more moist than in the other enclosures so I think that may have been the problem. It was still very plump as you can see, missing a meal or two would not be the cause imo.
View attachment 30501

Awww, I'm so sorry

 

[Dave Jay]

These enclosures are Phlogius sp. "stents" 1, 2, 3 and 5. (Belinda has number 4)
I thought I'd show the variation in webbing between 4 of the same species. 1, 2 and three are about the same size, around the 1" dls mark and in near identical enclosures, 5 is about 3" dls. and is in the same enclosure, just a bigger cave which it almost totally ignored, it only dug about an inch deep and left it.

and a side view of number 5s enclosure. She/he usually sleeps at the very top directly under the lid.

 

[Dave Jay]

@Tortoise Tom , you'll see in the above post what I meant by some using anchor points and some not. The above are all the same species and have been in their enclosures for the same amount of time.

 

[Dave Jay]

Awww, I'm so sorry

Yeah, that's the second one out of 18 that has died. With this one at least I know there was a variable, the enclosure was unintentionally too wet.

 

[Dave Jay]

24th June
Stents 1, 2, 3 given small crickets
Stents 5 given medium cricket

Blue Legs 1, 2, 3 all given small crickets

Geoffrey Crassipes still had a live cricket from 12th June, I removed it.

Sp.2 -
14, 15, 16, 17 given small cricket, all were visible in their burrows through the side of the enclosures. None moulted , all lively.
These four are in the square 5x5x4cm enclosures which dry out quite a lot over the course of a week, especially now that the fan heater is being used in the loungeroom almost all night and day.
Ambient temperatures are still between 15 and 18c though.
I am keeping these enclosures very dry now, just filling water dishes and adding 3 or 4ml to the tube which is only wetting the bottom of one corner.

12 had dead cricket from the 12th June in water dish. Not fed again.
13, 10, 11, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 burrows blocked.
9 given small cricket.

1 - 7 are in the biggest enclosures, 10x7x15cm. These are fairly dry above ground, but the deeper ( 9cm) substrate gives a good moisture gradient. I can see where one sling is burrowed, the chamber is just above the halfway mark, sitting just above where you can see the "damp" line, although others have obviously burrowed to the bottom because they've brought pebbles from the bottom to the surface. Their chambers aren't visible on the bottom though, I can't tell where their bedroom chambers are, they could be above the damp line where the substrate gets noticeably lighter. With these the false bottom works well, you can see the substrate blending from darker at the bottom to lighter at the top, the surface is almost dry and the sphagnum moss sitting on the surface is very dry now.
I think they're all burrowed as they are the furthest from heaters and not much above 15c most times. The scorpions are still surface active on the same shelves though.

9 through to 13 are in round enclosures , 9cm diameter, 7cm high.
Ambient temperatures rarely over 18c , but not below 15.

 

[Dave Jay]

Just a few pics of young Geoffrey, he last ate on the 30th May and I removed the cricket I gave him the other day, hopefully he'll moult soon, he needs to put on some size. To give you an idea, the enclosure is only 4cm diameter, the inner ring on the 'water bowl' fits into a 10mm tube so I've been waiting for him to moult for a while now. Usually he springs out of his enclosure and runs around in the work tub when I feed him but the last month he's behaved himself but hasn't eaten the crickets so he may be in pre-moult.

 

[Dave Jay]

Also, the temperature outside is below -1 c atm (1.17am) so maybe -3? Hopefully it won't be too cold for the little guys, both heaters on in the loungeroom and my nose and toes are cold!

 

[Dave Jay]

This is the first time we've seen Belindas' Phlogius 'goliath' since the night we got it.

It's about 3 and half inches dls, do you think the pedipalps are looking male?