Ally's Eight-Legged Journey

Big Spood finally has a new house! The posts on this blog are buffered, meaning that - in order to maintain a regular posting schedule, I write my posts in advance and schedule them to drop at a later date. This means that while it appears that a lot of time has passed since getting him, I actually ordered his new house the day after he arrived, and then rehoused him the day after that. He was in the Braplast tub for three days, in total. That was three days too long really, as he really didn't have a lot of space in there, but I promise he wasn't in there for the weeks since my last mention of him. In looking around for a reasonably priced enclosure, I happened upon this acrylic terrestrial enclosure on Amazon . It was reasonably priced, and came with an inbuilt hygrometer and thermometer. It was just the right size for Big Spood, and ought to last him a little while. (I don't know why it shows a beardy on the image - it is definitely not large enough to keep a bear...

Yesterday I was rather aggressively threatened with a "ban hammer" in one of the tarantula groups that I joined for educating myself on my spiders. They jumped on me instantly, for posting this photo of myself "handling" my tarantula, and promoting bad animal husbandry, without even asking the circumstances. In this particular picture (below) I had accidentally knocked Lolth's enclosure onto the floor and he had free fallen 3 feet down to the ground and landed on my sock. I picked him up before he went onto my pesticide-infused carpets (I also have two cats, and cats come with the risk of fleas, so my carpets are flea treated - unfortnuately, flea treatment is no observer of species!) and took a photo to be able to assess damage before I put him into another enclosure. Once I was sure that Lolth was okay and I had calmed down, I then posted the picture to a group asking about tarantulas life stages as I was wondering whether he was a spiderling or a juvenile - a...

Big Spood seems to be settling in nicely. He has eaten a cricket, started laying web mats down, and is moving around his enclosure. As such, it's been easy to tell that his legs have successfully detangled themselves, and are nicely straightened out. He just needed a little bit of space. Unfortunately, it is also clear to see that he does not have enough space in the braplast tub that he is in. When he stands to eat, he almost touches the lid, and it only takes him a few steps to walk from the front of his house to the back. Getting Big Spood a new house is now a priority, so watch this space for updates.

When doing the spood check today, I noticed that Incy Wincy was finally showing signs of an impending molt. Since I got him, he has been scraggly looking. His abdomen was pink and bald where he had kicked off all of his hairs, presumably through the stress of being posted - Incy Wincy is a very skittish spider, and runs for cover at the slightest movement so he is very prone to kicking hairs. Once he has molted, his abdomen should be nice and fluffy again. I can't wait to see that. Spiders (and other invertebrates!) molt through a process called Ecdysis, and while most insects will hang upside down to molt, spiders lay on their backs. The external skin or exoskeleton is the top layer of two, and is also known as the cuticle. Underneath the cuticle is a layer of epidermal "skin" cells. When getting ready to molt, glands in the epidermal layer secrete a hormone to separate the two layers. This hormone contains enzymes which - when active - will digest the inner laye...

Meet the Camillas. These are a pair of fire spotted millipedes ( Centrobolus splendidus ) from Mozambique. Yes, they are both named Camilla. We can't differentiate between them, and my daughter can't say "millipede", so she calls them Camillapedes. I love it! I've never kept this particular species before, but I am hoping that they will be okay. They are currently living in a Braplast tub with plenty of damp coco fibre and some wert moss, so they should be happy enough.

This is Ladybug. Ladybug is my third jumping spider, though she is not a Regal jumper like Fred and Wilma are. She is a Widow jumping spider, or Phidippus ardens . I believe this spider is a she, as the males tend to be a vibrant red (hence her name) while she is more of a burned orange on her abdomen. I don't have a particularly imaginative enclosure for her right now - I haven't decided what "theme" to decorate it with. But right now she has been moved into a spare acrylic arboreal enclose I had lying around, has been fed and watered, and has not so helpfully made her hammock and attached it to the front door. Should I ever open her enclosure, I will destroy her house... Fortunately this enclosure has a second feeding hatch, so it's not so critical.... yet.

So, the first critter to be unpacked from my recent mystery box was the Brazilian white knee, or Acanthoscuria geniculata . I was desperate to get this spood out of his tube because he seemed quite large from peering in. As it turns out, I couldn't even see a fraction of the spood, and he was much larger than I had realised. So much so, in fact, that when he came out of his tube, his legs were all crumpled up and tangled over each other. I didn't want to manipulate him too much, because he was already incredibly stressed and was flicking hairs at me while I tried to move him off of his tissue home. I am hoping that with a little bit of time and the space to sdtretch out, that he will be able to right himself without too much hassle. Failing that, he ought to be okay once he molts. As can be seen by this photo, this spood is actually quite a bit larger than any of my other ones. When fully grown he ought to get to be around eight inches across, diagonally. Right now he is...

So this is the last livestock purchase that I will be making for a while. I know I have said that before, but I have now reached my physical limit of what I can house and care for. In my room, I currently have: - 11 tarantula enclosures - four arboreal tubes, four sling boxes, and three 1.3 litre braplast tubs. As well as these I have: - two jumping spiders in medium acrylic arboreal tanks, - one mantis in a medium arboreal tank, - one mantis in a small deli cup, - one scorpion in a large faunarium, - a mealworm farm in an XL faunarium, - dubia roaches in a medium faunarium, and - one Sunny stick insect in a medium mesh terrarium. I also keep greenbottles, brown crickets, and fruit flies in their respective containers. My order today adds two Spotted fire millipedes ( Centrolobus splendidus ), a giant dead leaf mantis ( Deroplatys desiccata ), and a second mystery box! Centrolobus splendidus Yeah, I have no reason for ordering these other than I wanted them. I used to keep...

Time to move away from the Spoods and mantids, and give Diablo a little love. Since my last post about Diablo, I have added approximately 8 extra litres of coco fibre substrate into his enclosure. He loves to dig, he really loves to fill his food bowl with dirt, and who am I to stop him from doing what makes him happy? He's settled down enough now that he's not tapping on the glass all night, too. He's often found out in the daytime, just sitting and chilling. Which is nice. It also means that I've been able to get a pretty good look at him, even if I've not been able to get a decent photograph of him. When I took this photo of him, it was very obvious to see that he had two eyes, on the top of his head, in a central position. But I had heard that arachnids have between six to eight eyes. On my tarantulas, you can clearly see eyes - if not individual ones then you can see distinct clusters of eyes. So where are the others? Well, having done a bit of digging...