ExoticSte
New Member
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- 4
- Location
- Liverpool, England
i have heard mixed things about giving slings maggots.
That would be interesting, I'd like to know too. Of course they'd have to be cultured cleanly, but I have raised flies for frogs before. One reason for not feeding them to some animals is that the skins are designed to be fairly impervious to digestive fluids (could be outdated info) but that's not an issue with spiders.i have heard mixed things about giving slings maggots.
do you think i should just get meal worms or try maggots?That would be interesting, I'd like to know too. Of course they'd have to be cultured cleanly, but I have raised flies for frogs before. One reason for not feeding them to some animals is that the skins are designed to be fairly impervious to digestive fluids (could be outdated info) but that's not an issue with spiders.
Soldier fly maggots are sold as "calci-worms" and recommend by some as a good food for reptiles, they can be bred indoors in insect cages, and there's lots of "how to" information out there. They should be commercially available from what I've read in the past.
There's also lots of information on raising maggots laid by "wild" flies too, and lots of variations on how to build equipment to do so also.
I'd be interested to see what people have read or experienced about raising maggots and flies for tarantulas. Flies seem an obvious choice of food for spiders and apart from the bacterial concerns (which can be largely overcome with some methods) I wonder why it is not more common.
One reason may be the high calcium levels in maggots, there's a myth that excess calcium is deposited in the exoskeleton of tarantulas. It's often repeated on AB so I did some research, it's true for inverts like crabs and lobsters, they do fortify parts of their exoskeleton with calcium but it's not how it works in arachnids at all, they just don't utilise calcium in that way.
I just got four tiny slings yesterday, and I mean tiny! I don't think I can legally culture fruit flies here, so I was contemplating raising mosquitoes (yes, the slings are that small!) but little maggots would be better I think.
I went a bit deeper than that, into the composition of the exoskeletons of various groups of invertebrates, calcium uptake, mineral ratios, how calcium is used in the body etc etc.Stanley A. Schultz
https://people.ucalgary.ca/~schultz/CalciumMoltMyth.html
One reason for not feeding them to some animals is that the skins are designed to be fairly impervious to digestive fluids (could be outdated info) but that's not an issue with spiders.