My other addiction...

hey guys, just sharing my fascinations I have for my 8 legged friends

Ive grown up loving all animals and insects and what not, but I drew the line at spiders... that was until the day a friend of mine brought his to school a few years back. And it actually looked pretty cool, despite it hairy-ness

So after explaining what i had seen to my parents, I was hell bent on getting my own, and everyone in the family was ok with it:bigsmile::bigsmile:

started off with 4 tiny lil things and now I have many ranging from 0.5cm to 24cm...who would have thought:laugh:

Just a few pics of some of them....

 

Share some info on them please.

 

WOW! Scary and hairy.....Great photos!!!:vroam:

 

@ShaunJ have you ever seen something like this ?

This photo was taken by my brother in Rustenburg

 

:vroam:

 

:afraid:

 

@mark d - in simple terms there 3 "types", climbing ( most are lighting fast little teleporters), ground dwelling (which I think are the most common in SA) and burrowing (which you dont really see...cool BTW: theres a burrowing tarantula thats known for being able to hold its breath and swim:cheesy. they are divided into 2 classes, new world and old world. New worlds kick irritating hairs when annoyed and old worlds bite, not much threatening. Not very active like fish are, but they are still amazing to watch.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarantula

thats got basic info on them, AND i think they are among the easiest pets to keep.. real easy.

 

@Willem - i have absolutely no idea man haha, know more about taratulas and baboon spiders than our local spiders:laugh:

 

Could you keen them in a Paludarium? Will it bite me?

 

I think it depends on the species, but I think as long as its not very humid it should be ok, not 100% sure what a Paludarium is:unsure:, i have an idea though.

What quite a few tarantula keeps try to do is create a realistic environment, like with real plants and what not, similar to this....


and it looks a lot better than a dull tank with nothing but the spider and some peat (the soil stuff)

And will it bite? If you keep it as a display spider and its not provoked, it has no reason to:laugh: (the picture of the one with all the yellow hasnt got the best of personalities, so I keep him as a display spider:cheesy::bigsmile

 

@ShaunJ haha ok well my Paludarium is like a 50/50 terrarium and aquarium. Lots of water, but looks very natural. I don't want to keep vertebrates because I don't personally like keeping them in small cages. A spider on the other hand might be different? My Paludarium is 6ft/ 1.8m so quite big, what spider would you keep? Are they hard to keep?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpJsLIxxQoY watch that, think it might be what youre looking for...

the spider is a Camaroon red baboon (Hysterocrates Gigas), not very friendly but they can be kept communally (only 3 or 4 others that you can keep communally) given enough food and space (which 6ft has toooonnnnnnnnss for them haha,)
I think the only problem you might have is getting them to grow into that tank, if they are small, all that space can overwhelm them and growing takes a little time. but then again it might be better to keep them in a smaller tank at first so you could obsurve them and so on...

Nothing like fish, no ph levels to correct or specific temperatures to keep constant, or cycling/cleaning their tank like a fish tank.
I feed my adult spiders once every 2 weeks or so, and completely clean their tank once a year, if its not looking to scratch... and they are happy like that. And they dont really need a lot of space, a 1.5ft would be more than enough for most adults..
So no, they arent hard to keep at all haha:blink1:

a pic of my H. gigas, still small but shes awesome...


depending on the humidity,if im not mistaken they "change colour", the more arid, they become a darkish colour, the more humidity, the go a copperish red

 

Very nice selection you have! Im only have 4 at the moment, but worth it all the way.

Whats your feeding patern for them? are you a once a week feeder? or More than once a week?

 

@ShaunJ so what was that large spider thing or allien against the wall?

 

@Vez - Nice, what have you got? I feed the smaller ones every week and the adults every 2 weeks... some of the bigger ones wont eat every week, so decided to make it every second so that theres nothing else running around the tank

@ HennieRoux ​- ​Looks like a rain spider, could be wrong though..

 

Dam its 1 scary looking rain spider? They should have another name for it.....rain spider sounds to pretty for such an ugly mother!

 

i have:

Red Knee
White Knee
Chaco Golden Knee
Curly

 

nice man

 

Thanks @ShaunJ will check it out. Btw what about a fishing spider?

 

@Vez - nice T's man, your white knee should get pretty big really like the red knees

@EnvironmentalBro - Dont know much about them, but from what ive read, it could work.
there are other species that you could look at, theres a dwarf species (I. incei - trinidad olive) that can be kept in the 100s in the same tank, even sharing their food with each other. and a climbing species (Poecilotheria regalis - Indian ornamental) which are awesome, similar to the one with the yellow.

you could also try a multi-habitat environment which could include spiders, frogs, roaches, fish etc. the only problem (depending on what goes into the tank) is that it becomes a mini eco-system and one thing will eat the other and so on.