B. Smithi Sucessfully Fed!

Five nights after moulting, Red Knee was offered a cricket and he ate it straight away! As he didn't eat at all with me prior to his moult, it is really pleasing to see him eat and act as normal! I'll probably give him another one tomorrow.

The Tiger Rump is underground, but has cleverly built a descrete entrance to his burrow which was only noticealbe when he sneaked back in! He seems to also be a little off his food, it's a sign!

B. Smithi Moulted!

After much anticipation red knee has finally moulted :) I was doing my usual check this morning and didn't notice the moult straight away, and for a second I was like "Oo he looks strange" then noticed it was guarding its fresh moult by sitting on it. It looks so tiny compared to the spider! I don't know what it's like to be a spiderling, but I bet he feels much more comfortable, all I have to do now is let him harden up and hopefully I'll be able to feed him by the end of the week. Which will be amazing as he hasn't accepted food at all since I got him so to see him eat will be a relief.

Here are two photos, the first is post moult and the second is the exoskeleton with a ruler for emphasis on the tinyness! Don't worry, I'm not gonna hassle him again until he's ready to eat.

Webbing

The Tiger Rump has built a nice silk trap web next to its burrow; which is now a couple of burrows that could be joined together. It spends most of its time tucked away underneath, and it's exciting to see it make its place more of a home!

As for the Red Knee, it seems to be getting darker every day and heading closer to a moult, I hope it will happen any day now as it hasn't eaten since we had it, which is slightly worrying but it is to be expected. There will be photographes when it does :)

It is probably not possible to get some photos of the webbing, but I'm sure that spiderling will spin more and then you can see some photos!

Buried Alive C.Fasciatum

Don't worry, it's not as bad as it sounds! The spider is alive and well, but I assigned myself the task this morning of digging him out. Well, carefully taking some substrate out a grain at a time to find it all cosy and tucked up half way down the tub. Of course, he's gone back into a burrow now so I expect he knows what he's doing, just wanted to make sure it was alive and well seeings as he's only wee!

The first burrows

Since the last blog, both spiderlings have been settling in well. For the Tiger Rump, perhaps too well! It is very pleasing to see it eating well, it has had 4 crickets since arrival a week ago yesterday (!) and has made a really good burrow, which goes quite far down. In fact today, we found that it had actually burried itself alive and we cannot see the entrance to the burrow! We tried to find it but we didn't want to hurt it, so it's just going to be left to it's own business for now! And hope it surfaces soon...

Red Knee (photo on the right) is great, he's just been sitting on his substrate all day long, and, as you can see, has finally burried himself into the corner of the pot! I'm hoping he is going to shed soon, as I tried another cricket today and he just wasn't interested.