warning: spider inside - Voltra Online

tabby

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i have acquired a new spider! just your classic G. rosea, nothing fancy.

my coworker heard i keep spiders and he asked me if i would take this spider he's been trying to get rid of. apparently she's (unconfirmed female, but i'm going with it) about 6 years old. the next day, he brought in to work a 20g long with this spider in it, on wood chips, live crickets in the tank with her, sponge in the water dish :( and her log hide was way too small.

i thought she was going to be in a 5.5 or 10g so i had to rush to the pet store and get a new tank since 20g is WAY too big for this small baby. you know they don't just sell the mesh lids anymore at brick and mortars? i called every pet store in a 10 mile radius trying to find a cheap mesh lid for the empty 5.5g i had sitting in my basement but instead had to buy the entire $38 kit because THEY DON'T JUST SELL LIDS BY THEMSELVES (???) for that size tank anymore.

i've had her for 2 days now and she's as sweet as pie. gave me no trouble moving her over to her new enclosure (and you can tell by her abdomen she never kicks hairs off lol) and seems pretty happy and calm in her new space. even though she's such a common type of tarantula, i'm happy to add her to my spider shelf!

Priestess of Pie

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She's so fluffy. I think spiders are neat and I wish my instincts to yeet weren't so strong because I wanna be friends.

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Purpsy

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You've got guts as gold to own a spider. Although I still find spiders pretty creepy looking but is nice for you to give her a new home to live~

Glume

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Aw its so cute! I used to have about 20 tarantulas at one time, but now I have to be content with the jumping spiders and black widows that make their homes in my bathroom. Whats her name?

tabby

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@Priestess of Pie: her hairs are so LONG. i have some other tarantulas from the same genus and they're not nearly as fluffy. i love her fluffiness!

@PurpdaBurpPurp: i find them creepy looking as well, you're not alone. i think i just like loving something not many people can tolerate, i guess? i treat them with the utmost respect every time i have to handle them in any capacity (i use cups to move them, never my bare hands) or when i have to do tank maintenance. i like to make sure the situation is safe for everyone involved :)

@Glume: i'm not sure what i'll name her yet. probably something really cliche and overused like charlotte or rosy, which will eventually morph into some stupid nickname. any suggestions?

Glume

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@kegs: I'd probably name her after the ancient Egyptian goddess Neith, who was both a weaver and "the terrifying one" among other cool goddess traits.

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Purpsy

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@kegs: Ah that's awesome:3
And I totally get that, the difference between me and you is that I'll never have the courage to own a spider or anything insect like.
Is my greatest fear... If I see one approaching me I'll just run from the other direction screeching hysterically like a dying goat

tabby

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@Glume: it has been decided! she will be known as "neith" from this day on.
way better than what my coworker had named her/him - "jose"

@PurpdaBurpPurp: to each their own! just know they don't want to hurt you. they know you're much bigger. maybe next time you run away screeching, the spider will too

Purpsy

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@kegs: I know but when the moment actually comes, my mind goes blank and I start running. Sigh, I've gotten a bit better though. I've rescued a house centipede before. The poor thing couldn't get out on one of the kitchen sink. The whole rescue operation took maybe 10 min because I was using a newspaper to try to let it crawl on it so I can place it somewhere else and I was flinching like a mf x.x

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Tsundererra

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TSUN ★ TSUN ★ TSUN (≖︿≖✿)

What a cute, furry little lady. I love her coloring. <3

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athabm

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It's cute and fluffy! I like that you're going with naming her Neith. I'm glad your coworker surrendered her to you, so she can have a nicer life.

tabby

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@Bioshock: oh yes, many spiders! so many legs! i've been keeping tarantulas for about 13 years. i'm used to old worlds threat posing me for having the audacity to feed them. so my new baby Neith was like a breath of fresh air when i started tapping her legs to cup her and she walked right into the cup for me.
i do have a couple other grammostolas, mostly pulchras, but Neith is double the size of the ones i have. my oldest g. pulchra IS 13 (and male! wow!) and is nowhere near as large. guess this is what happens when a spider is fed weekly

@athabm: i have top tier respect for anyone who can pull a name out of the air like that. when i start naming things, it's almost always some combination of small/tiny/baby/miss/mister + boy/girl/princess/prince/cutieface/(whatever type of animal this is). i am glad i have her now too! she seems much less stressed in her new proper setup.

boyrrito

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wow thats horrifying
im afraid of spiders but i clicked anyway
wasnt expecting it to be a big hairy one

tabby

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@boyrrito: you were warned!

@Bioshock: in general, when you're buying a rare(r) spider, you're buying a baby - one that was bred in captivity and is being raised in captivity. there are tons of breeders in the community. jamie's tarantulas and kenthebugguy are two breeders i can think of and have personally purchased from with good results. jamie actually has some captive-bred c. lividus up right now! and they're at a size where they're not as prone to randomly dying.

he has lived this long because i follow a very old feeding philosophy, i.e. they'll grow at the rate you feed them. for males, it's worse to feed them frequently, because they'll grow quickly. once they sexually mature, males die shortly after. i did kind of gamble with this guideline when i first started out with tarantulas because i wasn't sure if what i was being told was correct, but after being in the hobby this long and seeing the method work, i always advise people to feed very infrequently once your spider is no longer a juvenile.

Eruca

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Aw she's sweet! Hope you love her a long time!

It's the regular household spiders that get me because they always appear when you're not expecting. The other day, I found one all scrunched up in my shower... :c Always the red ones end up dead in my shower because of the tile colors. Smh

athabm

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@kegs: No matter what my pets' names are, I end up calling them mr/miss/sir, etc. combined with a descriptor, like fluffybutt, or a variety of silly nicknames

tabby

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@Bioshock: not sure about the crickets, i don't feed those to my ts (not for any specific reason, i just don't like them). a sling over an inch should be able to handle a small mealworm, but if that fails, pet stores usually sell tubes of flightless fruit flies right by the cricket bin and the mealworms. you can definitely experiment with this though.

i would say the defensiveness is one challenge, the other challenge is that they are truly a pet hole. they'll burrow and you'll see them like once a month lol.

so when feeding, you'll want to feed them one cricket at a time, don't just throw a bunch in there. the crickets can bother the spider (and even bite them) especially if she isn't hungry and doesn't want to fight back. they're a lot less stressed when they're alone. if she doesn't eat, take the cricket out after an hour or so. but yes it's totally normal for them to not eat for a long time and then suddenly start eating again, especially grammostolas.

@Eruca: LOL honestly the household spiders kind of bother me too. i don't mind the ones that will just web up a corner and stay there until they die (i had one in the corner above my bed for the longest time) but the nomad spiders that will not stay still bother me.
the one day i was laying in bed under a sheet and felt a tickle on my leg. i thought it was just the string of my shorts sliding down my leg so i didn't think anything of it, until i got up later and there was a dead spider under me...

@athabm: it always morphs over time, too!

Eruca

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@kegs: :x yeah, they really get themselves in trouble in these cases. Safer to live large and hairy in an aquarium.

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tabby

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@Bioshock: what kind of setup does your pet store have? at the ones here, you can buy pre-bagged ones that have like a dozen+ in them but you can also ask a worker to pull as many as you need out of the bins and they just charge you like 10c per cricket. i can't think of anything that would have very little waste - they sell way too many at a time of everything else. even a little cup of mealworms will still have like 10 in it.