Amazingly, I'm early this month, such is the wealth of news and photos I have to share with you all. For those just scanning through, here's the headlines...

 

 

Zebra T's always look good in greyscale, so here she is again... the scratchy effect you can see at the edges of the photo is the marks her claws leave on the plastic as she climbs and explores. 

 

 

Now she has been climbing this month, which is what prompted me to change her substrate. I was watching her digging, and noticed that her existing substrate was too dry to hold together, even with some serious webbing, so she was unable to form a burrow. She has long since lost interest in the one I made for her, so the first step was to remove this so that she wouldn't keep falling on it, continually risking injury.

Here she is, in a short compilation video climbing, falling, and occasionally , digging...

In other news, young Fluffy is still eating lots, and doing well, and has firmly moved in to her new home, taking over the burrow with increasing regularity in bright light, although she is still confident enough to bask out in the open most of the time under normal conditions. No photos pf her this month, and you would have had a video as well if I hadn't botched the transfer up and lost half the files in the process ! Oh well - feeding time will come again soon, and I feel I have more than made up for it with the coming poecilotheria video clip...

 

Moving on, great news with young flash too... she has AT LAST emerged from her old tank, completing the 'stressless tank transfer' procedure I began over 3 months ago !!! Just goes to show that my estimation of when a  space is too small for a spider to live comfortably is woefully different to that of the spider ! Only yesterday did she finally venture completely outside her old tank, for long enough for me to retrieve the old one. But out she is, and here's the photos of her in her new, substantially larger and better ventilated environment...

 

 

 

 So that's little flash all settled into a new house. There will be a video of what we found inside next month, but here's the pics for now.

 

I can't tell you how strong that top ring of webbing was - it took quite a lot of muscle power to separate the lid from the tank, and then everything else from the thick layers of webbing that were therein... however after several long minutes with 2 pairs of tweezers, I had managed to extract all 5 exuviae from the chaotic inner structures, so are the photos we've all been missing for the last 6 months - Flash's ex selves, lined up for comparison, and amazingly, still colourful and iridescent after all this time...

 

 Here's a big pile of them...

 

 

And here they are with a bit more order to them... so we can see how she grew...

 

 

Lastly, here's her latest cast-off exhibiting some rather good colours... unfortunately, she starts going less blue now as she gets older...

We are also entering the 'danger phase' where not enough humidity or air flow can kill her. I must monitor things very carefully from here on in... 

 

Right, a VERY rare little photo-treat next. Despite raising her from almost birth, which was around 7 months ago, i think I have about 5 photos in total of Tenebrus, my elusive Sun tiger. This is a great disappointment to me as she is one of the most truly beautiful spiders I keep, and I'd like to share all that spidery goodness with you. But no, hiding is what she does, and she does it very very well. So here, I am pleased to bring you a fairly ropey shot of JUST her feet, which was all she was showing me this morning when I was in doing photos. Believe me - we're lucky to get even that.

 

 

Twice this week, I have tried to catch her feeding on video, and both times she moved SO fast that she was out of the burrow, twice round the tank, caught the prey, and back in the burrow before my hand time to move 5 inches to hit record - amazing speed - I can honestly say I have never seen anything like it from any of the others - even Legz the Poecilotheria... awesome spider.

 

Let's move on and have a quick look in on ZBD, who as you may remember, had moulted recently, eaten a huuuge cockroach, and pulled her water tube down. This hole in tank security has now been fixed, alternative methods of water delivery have now been established, and here is the big girl herself taking full advantage of a newly cleaned and filled water bowl...

 

 

Well we have got a lot to get through today... and who's up next - it's little 'Blue', the smallest of all small things that live in my spider room. Well, of those with my permission, anyway... :) Here she is in the smallest space available within her tank, which this week she is calling home... 

 

 

However, out on a supervised excursion earlier this week, she was bold as brass, had a run round on me, and the furniture in general, and was exhibiting her wonderful green carapace, and zingy orange legs.  Although you can't see it in the photos, her chelicerae are definitely blue, although at themoment, they are the only parts of her to be so...

 

 

Which would leave Legz and Binky to check up on... so let's do just that...

 

We've got some pretty special video from Legz later, so let's have a look at some photos of her first. She's heading for 5" leg span now, so this is a fast growing spider to be that at only 8th instar. But then again, nearly everything about her is fast. She only seems to have 2 speeds - stationary, and teleport. Here's the former in (non) action.

 

 

She's also had a tank change recently, hence no detritus on the glass to get in the way of photos this month !

  

 

 Here is a macro shot of her carapace, showing the purple, subtle green and yellow warning hues that typify this species.

 

But back to the speedy side of her... here's a video of what happens when a spider moves too enthusiastically for it's own good. This is also the only time I have ever seen Legz fall off the glass, although I am only guessing that this wasn't a conscious choice on her behalf - she does, after all, catch the cricket !

 

 

I was going to say, 'and lastly we move on to Binky', but that would be doing Boots, our 2nd smallest guest a large injustice. Here's a magnificent pose she struck for me this morning when I was in photo-shoot mode...

 

 

and while we're here, she's obviously been taking lessons from flash, and has now firmly webbed her inner tank lid shut. Again, damn good job it's there !! Amazing webbing though, so here it is, with the spider responsible lurking in the background...

 

 

And NOW we can move on to Binky, who sits, resplendent, and eating well, and looking fully recovered after last months moulting problems.

 

 

 

 And that would conclude another month's updates for the Spider Diaries... we currently have just the one spider in pre-moult, so expect to see some new colours and an exuvium from Boot's next month...

 

til then, fare well, spider-fans...