Ally's Eight-Legged Journey

This is Loki. He is my Hapalopus formosus spiderling. These spiders - also known as pumpkin patch spiders - are a dwarf tarantula, growing to about two and a half inches across. When Loki came to me, he was about 0.5cm, and now...I'm not actually sure he's much more than that. About 1.0cm, maybe 1.5cm. He has molted multiple times, he just seems to grow slowly. When he arrived, he was the smallest spider I'd ever had: The enclosure he is in there - and indeed is still in - is a spiderling tub from The Spider Shop, and is 9 by 9 cm. It's a small one. He still hasn't grown enough for me to move him into anything larger, and I do think he will always be my smallest spider. However, he has done some growing, so when I checked in on him this week I decided to get him out and take a comparison photograph. In this picture you can see two things. The first is that he has his adult colouration and markings. Does this mean that he's no longer a spiderling? I...

Well, I did say that Anansi liked his food, so I shouldn't be too surprised. But here is Anansi having massively overeaten. His abdomen is quite distended. Hopefully he will either shrink down in time, or go into another molt cycle. I currently use a spreadsheet to help me keep track of each spoods last meal, what it was, whether they took it, and their last molts. This is supposed to help me monitor any issues as a lot of the spoods (e.g. Lucifer and Pratt) have disappeared into their substrate and not been seen since they arrived. It doesn't help me with Spoods who over eat, however. Anansi? You are on a diet!

Apologies if this upsets anyone, but today was a bad day. Tonight I lost my beautiful Winnie. My first sppod, the cutest little spood that ever was. I am absolutely devastated, and yes - I am crying. I don't know how or why she has passed. It was unexpected and very sudden. After all the stress of her over eating after the waxworm, she went into an unexpected molt about 10 to 14 days later. I kept an eye on her, checking and misting every day. Today at lunchtime she seemed to come out of her molt just fine - all limbs intact, seemingly no issues. I was so happy and felt I could finally relax - I took a photo and left her in her molting hammock excited to see her new clothes and slimmer waistline... But just a couple of hours later she was gone. I found her on the floor of her enclosure in a death curl. It is unusual for a spider to leave their molting hide after such a small amount of time. I had expected her to be in her molt hammock for at least four days, in line with the ...

Winnie has woven another molting hammock. She's only been out of her last one for about a month, so this was unexpected. That said, she is still rather large from eating the waxworm, so I can imagine that she's uncomfortable. I'm hoping that this will be the end of the waxworm saga, and that she will emerge nice and svelte!

So worried about my spood right now. I did a stupid and gave her a waxworm... she hadn't been fed in a while, her abdomen was small, and she looked hungry. In the past she's only eaten part of an insect if she's gotten near full so I didn't really think, I guess... but she was getting sooooo full on this waxworm. I tried gently blowing on her to get her to drop it, and she just kept turning her back to me. Then I tried to cut it in half so she only got part of it, but she kept putting her legs around it like "my worm!" and I was scared that I'd cut her legs by accident so I couldn't go through with it. This was 2 days ago. Now she's a super full, very engorged spood, who has taken to sitting in her substrate... and I'm very concerned about abdominal separation. If people aren't familiar with abdominal separation in spiders, it's where an over fed spider has such a heavy abdomen that the weight of it pulls down and physically breaks th...