Ally's Eight-Legged Journey

Recently I made the decision to rehouse Diablo, my Asian forest scorpion. As previously discussed, I acquired Diablo through a Spider Shop mystery box - I paid £30 and they sent me an assortment of critters, worth more than the £30 I paid. It was a great experience, but at the time I wasn't at all prepared to care for a scorpion, and it has been a steep learning curve since then. Having since been on the website, I learned that Diablo was a wild caught specimen. This explains why he has been pacing his enclosure, tapping on the glass as if to find a weak spot and escape. I have moved him from one tank to another in a vain attempt to give him enough space to satisfy him, but he doesn't seem to be happy yet. At one end of my front room, I had an old 125 litre Juwel aquarium. I used to keep tropical fish, but a busy work schedule and bad home life balance meant that I unfortunately didn't notice when the filter packed in, and it eventually killed everything in the aquarium...

Now that "Mini-Lolth" is home and settled, I've been able to take photos and compare his size to that of Lolth when he first arrived. I don't know if there is actually much of a size difference, but Mini-Lolth definitely feels smaller. So small, in fact, that I'm anxious about giving him a name in case he's super fragile and I lose him. Above there is Lolth on the left and Mini-Lolth on the right. While they don't really look too disimilar in size, Lolth definitely has more developed legs, and you can actually see his eyes. Without my finger in the photo for scale though, it's all conjecture. What I can show you side by side is how big Lolth is now compared to Mini-Lolth, which is a comparison that makes me very happy. That is my little finger in both pictures. When you see the spiders day in, day out, it's easy to forget just how much they've grown in your care. Seeing that makes me feel very happy, because he has gone from a tin...

And I've done it again... I keep saying I've got enough critters, but then I put in another order - I just can't help myself! A lot of it is because of my "wishlist", which I have shared several times on this blog. As a regular customer of The Spider Shop , I am signed up to their newsletter so that I can see what they have coming in, when they get it. Currently I am most interested in the T. seladonia Brazilian jewel dwarf tarantula - an absolutely gorgeous arboreal trapdoor tarantula with a pink and blue sheen to it's abdomen, but which costs about £90 for a 0.5cm spiderling, and can often fail to thrive in captivity if it fails to build a trapdoor. As such, it's a risky purchase that I talk myself out of every time they come in stock, and they are never in stock for very long. This week, however, a spider came along which I was very interested in - Pamphobeteus sp. machalla . A terrestrial tarantula from South America, these spiders are orange wi...

I have been thinking for a while that I would like to rehouse my jumping spiders, and there are several reasons for this. Firstly - The tanks need cleaning, and badly. I have to remove the spiders from their enclosures, as the plastic sides are getting very difficult to see through. Firstly, they are covered with water marks from my spritzing the spiders regularly to hydrate them and keep the humidity up. I live in a very hard water area, and up until recently I have been using tap water in my spritzer. The end result is a collection of enclosures which have very misty, dusty walls due to limescale marks. I have recently made the switch from tap water to distilled water - which I buy online - so this should be less of a problem going forward. To further add to the grime on the sides - and this does seem to be specifically a jumping spider trait - they are also covered in poop. My jumping spiders seem to enjoy nothing more than turning around and sending a high velocity projecti...

As one of my largest spiders, Big Spood is often the subject of my photography attempts. I love the way she walks - lifting each leg with slow deliberate movements. I love the way she charges at her food - sometimes so fast that she tumbles over, taking her prey with her. I love her markings and the way her fur is so defined in her photographs - though I do regret not having named her some derivative of Beetlejuice, for the dark and white stripes. I also love the way she can be very expressive of her moods. I have previously posted photos of her sitting in her cage looking very concerned, as well as photos of her reared up on her back legs, baring her fangs. Today, I post images of her bipolar nature - or perhaps her "hanger". These photos were taken when I opened her cage to perform the basic weekly maintenance and feed. She took particular offence to me attempting to remove her water bowl for cleaning - she is one of many of my spiders who likes to use their water ...

Big Spood has finally gifted me with a molt, and with it I have been able to confirm the sex. I have discussed sexing tarantulas on this blog several times here and here, so this was an easy spood to sex. In my most recent post about tarantula sexing, we looked at Incy Wincy's molt and concluded that he was a male. When his molt was flipped over, there was no sign of a pouch (known as a spermathecae) under his epigastric furrow. As a reminder, this was his molt - the circled area is where there would have been a pouch in which to store sperm for fertilisation, had he been a female: As you can see, there's nothing there. I had previously posted to social media asking for people a little bit more knowledgeable than myself to attempt to sex Big Spood from her underside. This is less accurate than molt sexing as the differences are much more subtle - it is all down to the angle and the shape of the epigastric furrow. This is the photograph that I submitted to the forums, and ...

Tyson gave me a surprise this evening. Please note that I still don't know what sex Tyson is - I originally suspected female, but now I'm not sure. For the purposes of this post I will refer to Tyson as a "he", as his name is masculine. I may update his gender in later posts. Tyson is one of my two smaller mantises - a Yunnan flower mantis. He's just over an inch long, with an olive green and white body, and lovely purple eyes. I always knew that he was going to be smaller than Catchy, but I have to confess, I thought he'd get bigger than he has done. I have been waiting on a delivery of fruit flies for my smaller critters and they finally arrived today, so I was going from tank to tank, spritzing the smaller cages and then dropping some fruit flies in for them. I don't have many critters that still need fruitflies - the two smaller mantises, Loki my dwarf tarantula sling, and Pratt my curly hair sling. The two slings are about a centimeter across, ...

In preparation for moving my blog to Wordpress , I have been coming up with some logo ideas. I haven't really set on any one thing yet, so I've been using logo generators on the internet to come up with ideas. What I can say is that the end result will be drawn by myself, and I will most likely use Winnie as the basis for the lineart. Her legacy must continue, and her memory be honoured. I may have screwed up with her care, but I loved her very much and I learned a lot from her. Some of the ideas I have been toying with are below: