Eventful Day

Like the title says, its been one heck of a day. I shipped off a couple things to a friend of mine. He's really into the true spiders, and I collected a true for him. A friend brought by a Latrodectus sp. aka Black Widow, and two days after receiving it, it dropped a sac! This blew me away to say the very least. So, today I packaged it up and the sac and sent it to my friend, along with a juvie male P. ornata. He has a girl friend for the little guy, and soon when he matures, they have a heck of a date planned! I may have some babies to distribute soon!

Here is the Latrodectus sp. with eggsac




After all that was said and done, snapped a few pics of other critters

Cyriopagopus schioedtei





Grammastola rosea eating Blactica dubia roach




Interesting story behind that Rose Hair, maybe someday I'll go into it. Long story short on one thing, if you take a look at the second leg on the right, you'll see its much smaller than the others. For the last year, its been missing that leg. This roach was its first meal since molting, and now it has all eight legs and the back legs are back to full health. It was quite abused before I got it.

good thing its in your care looks happy

Nice pics! I love Latrodectus mactans. I used to breed them, I hope that egg sac hatches for your friend! Your Cyriopagopus schioedtei looks awesome, and looks like your doing a great job with the Grammastola rosea . Love the feeding pic of it btw .

Thanks. I believe that is a L. hisperus, and I can say that she did not want to cooperate about being shipped, I did get her packaged up though. The rose hair is totally spoiled, and doing much better in my care. And everybody loves a feeding pic!
Just for a comparison, here's the Rose Hair when I first got her



And after housed better





Also, here is a ventral view of C. schioedtei

Male juvenile


Female juvenile


One of the interesting things about Cyriopagopus schioedtei is that when juveniles, the males will have a black chest and the females will have a green chest. It makes sexing them incredibly easy and fast!

Oh! I was going to ask how you could tell. Good thing I finished reading, eh?

So aside from checking their molts, is there a way to sex T's? I tried to read up on ventral sexing and I think it made my eyes bleed. Didn't get it at all...

Here's some reading material
http://www.birdspiders.com/faq_sex.php
Now, honestly, its not as cut and dry as Rick West makes it, and some people are good at ventral sexing and others aren't. Its also not always reliable, the only sure 100% way of sexing a tarantula is by checking for the spermathicae on a molt. Well, unless you look at the pics of the C. schioedtei LOL! That's the only spider you can do that with though to my knowledge, as far as checking for the black sternum. When ventrally sexing a Pokie, you're looking for a small triangle on the epigastric furrow (tummy section) and the spacing between the book lungs. With many species you can look for the hair pattern Rick West discusses in that article. Honestly, some people are good at it, but it shouldn't be taken really seriously. It just increases your chances at guessing most of the time. Its also hard to teach, but there are people out there who can do it really really well.

Man your lucky I finished reading! I was about to yell at you for keeping your rose hair on aquarium gravel!

You'll never see me keep anything on gravel, especially with dead beetles lying around. Take a closer look, you'll actually see dead bugs the guy tossed in from his back yard. The whole thing smelled bad, and a rehousing was needed desperately. That girl is doing a lot better now, her back leg was mangled and the tip of one of her front legs was mangled, in addition to missing a leg. After she molted a month or whatever ago, she now looks a LOT better!

I knew you knew better that's what made me take a closer look

By the way, Jeff told me the sac was no good, but he was really happy to get a L. hesperus from my area. I guess the hour glass is really cool on the ones from my area. Real bummer he couldn't hatch out a new batch. Something tells me he may ask for more from me

I don't know why the hesperus from your area would be different from my area. If you need more let me know. we have TONS of them around here.