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Top tips for spider keepers...
General Tips... - Expect the unexpected. Even a tarantula that has sat perfectly still every time you have opened its tank for its entire life so far has the potential to change its behaviour overnight. NEVER take the assumed disposition of a spider for granted.
- Do not blow on spiders. They do not appreciate you for it.
- Keep an eye -bath and some anti-histimine in the bathroom to deal with any urticating hairs that go where they shouldn't.
- Tell your Doctor what you keep, and exactly what species. Make sure they write it down. It might help at some point.
Spider Room Tips... - If possible, assign a room of the house to your spider(s). Keep it clear of other pets, noise, bright light and general disturbance. If possible consider keeping the temperature of this room slightly higher than the rest of the house.
- Spend £12 on a decent night vision webcam, and set it up in your spider room linked via USB to your PC, where you can then watch it ad infinitum without disturbing it, even in total darkness, and easily record your spider's antics for everyone elses enjoyment...
- Keep a window open for good ventilation, except in very cold weather.
- Make a non-alarmist sign for the door, so that visiting workmen can know to avoid that room.
- Never get a T out to show your friends.
- Never use your spiders to frighten people who are afraid of them.
- Tell your friends to move slowly and gently round your spider room.
Housing Tips...
- Place your T tanks where direct sunlight will never fall on them. Corners of rooms work well.
- A strip thermometer on the inside of the tank will alert you to temperature changes.
- For sling enclosures, where the spider is too small to drink from a water bowl, provide a scrunched up ball of white tissue soaked in water. replace it every day or 2 in order to avoid stagnation and breeding of bacteria. Do not use a 'tarantula sponge' for this reason exactly.
- To measure humidity, you need a digital hygrometer, costing around £25. Do not buy the round guage style devices, which are hopelessly inaccurate, and worse than useless.
- Turn heatmats off as soon as the weather makes you feel noticeably hot.
- Spiders do not appreciate being in the same room as loud music with beats, or any sort of bass.
- With defensive spiders, consider building a feeder tube down which to drop food, and re-fill the water bowl. then you will only have to enter the enclosure occasionally to clear up remains etc...
- With arboreal heavy webbers, have at least 2 ways into the tank, so that if one is webbed over, you still have access.
- Cutting out the bottom section of your flowerpot hide, and placing this against the glass allows you to see your T inside the burrow (assuming they then choose to make it there)
- Make sure there is nothing sharp or heavy in your tank that could injure a falling T, or trap one by falling on it.
- Should a spider unexpectedly run on to you, resist the urge to throw it off, stay very still, and try and maintain a calm breathing pattern. See what it does next. If possible, encourage it gently back the way it came and into the tank with a soft artists paintbrush. If this is not possible, slowly move so as to make its path to the ground as easy as possible, and wait until it moves there of its own accord. Then cup it with a bottle top, and return to tank...
Maintentance Tips... - The number one tip for maintenance is 'Tweezers are your friends'. You need long, quality forceps or tongs to reguarly perform your tank maintenance. With aggressive spiders, you may need 2 pairs; one to retrieve the first set you dropped when the spider tried to run up them!
- Should you find that you have to move your spider, DO NOT PICK IT UP WITH TONGS OR TWEEZERS, even if you have padded them first - you risk massive injury to your T, and it will be furious when you put it down. Instead, use a long artists paintbrush to gently, but firmly touch the back legs of the spider, which, if compliant, will move forward. Be aware though, that a less compliant spider might turn on the paintbrush, or flick hairs at you. In this case a 3L bottle top and a sheet of plastic, or similar (not cardboard) to slide under it is the only practical way. Once contained, many spiders feel safer, and will calm down.
- If you need to maintain the tank of a cross, and stressy spider, distraction is the best tool in the box. Pop some food in first, wait til spider is merrily eating away, and you then have a much greater chance of doing your business unopposed. You still need caution, and don't 'maintain' right next to the T, who might think you are trying to steal its meal if you get too close.
- Always have your 3L bottle top nearby to contain any spiders choosing to make a dash for it when you open their tanks.
- Clean the glass (outside the tank) every so often ! Do this very gently while the spider is preoccupied eating.
- Make sure you can SEE the spider before you open any tank...
- Fit magnetic strips to heatmats to easily attach and detach them from spider tanks.
- Always mount heatmats on a side wall rather than underneath the tank. Spiders burrow away from heat.
- A turkey baster is a very good way of getting water into a water bowl from a distance.
- A perfume mister is pretty much the only thing that can effectively mist arboreal sling pots.
- Webbed over water bowl ? Pop another one straight over the top as a temporary fix. Wait until spider is preoccupied before disentangling both.
- If a spider is threat posturing at you, leave it alone, and let it calm down. Try whatever it was you were doing later, preferably, while it is doing something else.
- Do not open a Poecilotheria tank at night, when they are most active. Wait til tomorrow, when they would rather hide.
- Should a spider unexpectedly run on to you, resist the urge to throw it off, stay very still, and try and maintain a calm breathing pattern. See what it does next. If possible, encourage it gently back the way it came and into the tank with a soft artists paintbrush. If this is not possible, slowly move so as to make its path to the ground as easy as possible, and wait until it moves there of its own accord. Then cup it with a bottle top, and return to tank...
- Keep several spider-cupping tools nearby to assist you if necessary. Gather them before you open the tank.
- When dealing with difficult spiders, where even gentle tank maintentance is not possible without your implements being attacked, you need to cup the spider in your 3L bottle top and restrict its movement while you work round it.
Prey Tips... - Buy small crickets (pinheads) and grow them by feeding and watering them well. They last months, feed a great size range of spiders as they grow, and you know where they have been to a greater extent than the often appalling standard of adult crickets supplied by pet shops. Unfortunately, they still smell the same.
- Crickets are partial to apple, potato, carrot, celery, and most vegetables. Except onions. And leeks. Oh - and garlic - is that a vegetable ? Suitably sized vegetables should be added every day, or every other day, but bran, or porridge oats, or the like should always be available.
- Cockroaches will eat anything, including glue ! Don't feed them glue. They like fruit too, and apparently Richmond's skinless pork sausages.
- Crickets will eat each other if you don't feed them enough, or provide them enough space to hide. Roaches won't though, and are far more sociable animals.
- It is usually fairly pointless feeding recently acquired prey to your spiders without feeding the prey for a few days first - well fed prey= well fed spider.
- Keep your photo sessions short to minimize disturbance to the spider.
- Maintain at least 50% of your attention on what the spider is doing when taking photos of open tanks, or free roaming spiders.
- Flash Photography is not a good idea through glass, but does bring out the irridescent qualities of spider colouring.
- Use a tripod and a 2-sec shooting delay for ultimate image sharpness.
- Use Macro mode to take close shots of your animals. Super macro is best reserved for moult details, as placing a camera 2 cm from a live spider is not a good idea, unless it is behind glass. Even then, when very close, expect the spider to run away from the sudden shutter movement.
- Avoid reflections from glass by taking from many different angles to minimize the problem.
- If your spider is still, use a high F-stop (F8 or so) allowing even close shots to have good focal length, and consistant focussing.
- If your spider is moving, use shutter priority mode to choose the fastest shutter speed you can attain in the available light.
- Remove reflection glare from areas of your photos by soft selecting the lighter areas in Photoshop, and then applying a downward mid-levels shift.
More being added all the time...
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