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How to move a selection of Tarantulas from one house to another... I have recently moved house (thats ME, - I'm not talking about moving spiders from one tank to another) Here are some suggestions from me that might make the process easier and generally less stressy for the animals... - Move everything else out of the old house first, and get the new place setup so that everything else is there and in place. This means that the disturbance and movement around them is minimized when they arrive in their new location.
- I went for the 'in-tank' move strategy, as opposed to the 'get-the-spider-out-the-tank-and-into-a-box' approach. I chose this so that they would all have somewhere they felt safe to go and hide when everything started moving around them.
- Remove everything in the tanks (apart from hides and burrows, obviously) that is not webbed down. You don't want to crush anyone because a bump in the road knocked some mopani bogwood (very heavy) on top of your animals... so - out came terracotta waterbowls, heavy wood (not cork bark - that's very light indeed) and anything else that you imagine could cause a problem.
- Babies, and slings I decided to transfer all in one big box, so carefully packed their tanks / phials / containers into an open topped reinforced cardboard arrangement (so that you can see what is happening throughout the move), which you can surround with packing material (foam shavings were used in my case).
- I did the first 'run' to new place with slings. I drove at a consistent 10 miles an hour to the new house (much to the frustration of everyone behind me!), and very carefully lifted the box into its new location. I then fixed up and plugged in heatpads, and lastly unpacked them all carefully.
- Larger spiders have to go 1, or 2 at a time, I decided, in the front seat of my car, seat-belted in, but without packing, so that I can see what they're doing all the while. Moving literally 1 minute away from the old address STILL took around 2 hours to move the 6 larger tanks. Help was enlisted for Binky's massive new tank, and 2 people were definitely necessary to carry it on foot to its final location.
- All spiders in, all heatpads plugged in and turned on. Now for optimum tank arrangement. I arranged the tanks as much as the room permitted with reference to each animals heat and light preferences. So, Poecilotheria, and Psalmopoeus closest to storage heaters, and in the darkest places, Avicularia to lighter and and airier areas (!), and the spider's that don't mind too much either way (Aphonopelma, Lasiodora, Lasiodorides, Acanthoscurria, Chromatopelma fitting in around them.
- Final check on all spiders to make sure nobody got injured, and to note any unusual behaviour caused by the recent 'adventure'.
- Pop all previously removed tank accessories back in place... refill waterbowls, mist etc...
- Setup atmosphere monitoring gear so we can see what's what with heat and humidity...
Well that's what I did, and for the move itself, everything went OK, and everyone made it through enitirely uninjured... We did have some unusual behaviour from nearly every spider, as you'd imagine would be the case... It was definitely safe to say that every spider noticed something was going on... Most made themselves very small at the base of their burrows, or spread their legs and other appendages wide and hung on. Only little Flash (Juvenile A.versicolor) actually went for a wander mid-move, and in fact chose this moment to wander the furthest from her burrow she ever has done, so that was a nice surprise to see her out and about. Less surprising was the fact that she didn't fall from the glass once during the whole moving procedure, a fact that I'd hope had something to do with the carefulness with which I transferred them all, but possibly has more to do with her superb glass-gripping ability. So , in general with a bit of thought and pre-planning it is possible to very much minimize the stress of moving house for your inverts...
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