First Spider Molt - Chilean Rose!!

What do i do?
Last night she was out beside her water and she looked pretty rough lol and i just checked there to clean her water...noticed her legs and underside in a weird position and i saw her in behind it in her cave what do i do now?

this is the first time one of my T's has molted

I think you leave them alone to harden up and make sure theres no crickets or the likes in the tank but maybe one of the guys who keep them can help. Maybe PM John & Raymond but a reply in here would be great too for all us novices :)

Thanks Tan :)
I'll leave her be anyways until i get word from the experts lol so i'm sure they'll see this

Hi Joe
Sorry I have been out all day (twins birthday) so have only just logged onto the forum. Its probably a bit late but the first thing is not to panic, the second is to leave the spider alone even if you find it upside down with its legs in the air and apparently dead. This in fact is the position that almost all spiders moult in. Most spin a mat which they lie on, the old skin sticks to the mat and helps the spider pull it off to expose the new skin.
The new skin is soft and at this stage the spider is vunerable to attack so as Tan says remove any large crickets from the viv.
Hopefully your spider will have completed the moult by now and hopefully will have started to grow back her new legs.
I have attached a couple of pics of one of my baby spiders which I caught moulting some time ago, it gives you some idea of the position they get into and how vunerable they are. The lighter pink is the spider in its new skin, the darker one is the old shed skin.





Let us know how she got on
john

Hi John thanks for the reply,
Shes molted fully now, i got a small peek in through the viv and she looks very different, still don't see any new legs, but heres hoping!
I'll leave her till the tomorrow evening or maybe Tuesday before i take out the molt..
I'll give her a good week before feeding and get some snaps of her and the molt and maybe she can be sexed by someone !

Hi Joe
I'm glad everthing seems to have gone to plan, she will probably not want to feed for a few days so leaving her until the weekend is probably a good idea. I really hope she regenerated her two missing legs though it might take a couple of sheds to grow them to the same length/size as the other ones. Do let us know the outcome!
all the best
John

Thanks John,
I'll leave her so, and i'll of course get some pictures and let you all know whats going on!!

She has EIGHT LEGS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I went for a little peek and she moved and theres 8legs :O I am sooooo happy! Not only that, but, she is also so so pink! Her legs are very dark, with reddish hairs and her back (middle part lol) is extremely pink !! So different to before!

That's great Joe let's get a look at these regenerated legs...

Pics are on the way Tony, pics a plenty lol Shes so amazing looking compared to the first pictures of her!
absolutely totally completely different haha

Hi Joe
I'm so happy for you, its always great when something like this happens, looking forward to the pics.
John

Thanks John :)
I have the pics taken (took the molt out) and i am uploading them now

And one of her rearing up!


For comparison, when i got her..

(While i am previewing the pictures, they look a bit nuts, but i changed all to medium on Photobucket...sorry if there out of proportion)
Joe.

Hi Joe
Great pics! Are the two new legs slightly shorter than the ones on the other side of her body? Fantastic story and one which has had a happy ending.
Judging by the shape of her abdomen I would guess at a 'she' but you could confirm this by looking at the shed skin under a microscope. (any good Tarantula book or web site will show you what you are looking for)
Hoping the others are still doing well (have you tried the defrost frozen crickets yet) tried all mine today on defrost and only one refused out of 30 that I fed ( I think the one non feeder is about to shed.)
Cheers John

snakeboyadam2k8 wrote:Hi Joe
Great pics! Are the two new legs slightly shorter than the ones on the other side of her body? Fantastic story and one which has had a happy ending.
Judging by the shape of her abdomen I would guess at a 'she' but you could confirm this by looking at the shed skin under a microscope. (any good Tarantula book or web site will show you what you are looking for)
Hoping the others are still doing well (have you tried the defrost frozen crickets yet) tried all mine today on defrost and only one refused out of 30 that I fed ( I think the one non feeder is about to shed.)
Cheers John

Hi John,
Yes they are slighty..but just slightly smaller than the other ones! I hope shes a she cos i'd be gutted if she wasn't!
I think i might look it up and give it a try cos i'd love to know the sex,
And no i haven't tried the defrost crix yet, the ones i've been feeding them live ones but i've been crushing there heads, having trouble with my petshop (which i am never visiting again) they won't stock the large crickets i need cos there stubborn a55es lol, so i''m getting a big order of them from Tony in EIR alongside a new faunarium like the ones your spiders were in for the chile rose 'cos shes much bigger now. the ones my petshop has in stock are only tiny...maybe size 2s at biggest which is unacceptable so i'll get some online and make it a regular thing,
Also i have a Q for you, how do you freeze them?, or what do you freeze them in? Because i asked on a different forum and got loads of different opinions on it

Hi Joe
I have just had a big order of livefood from the Livefood Wharehouse.com who are very reasonable and give free postage as well. The livefood comes in bags which go straight into the freezer after about half an hour I take out the newspaper packing or egg cartons and pour the dead crickets/ locusts etc into small plastic boxes and then back into the freezer. A couple of nights ago I tried every animal we have on defosted crickets and not one refused them. Bearded dragons (adults and hatchlings) , Whites tree frogs, African Pygmy hedgehogs, 17 species of tarantulas ranging from adults to small slings and Argentine Black and White tegus. Some of these would not have been offered defrosted before but as I said not one refused them. I know that some people will say that they should have been gut loaded before freezing but at the price I bought them at its easier to simply give a couple of extra to make up the nutritional difference. Also having had a couple of free ranging adult crickets chirping happily in the house did not help and the OH has now banned live crickets completely.
I think this would make things so much easier for you if you can get and freeze a couple of boxes of adult crickets, they would do you for weeks.
regards
John

Very interesting read John. I've never tried or even thought about freezing the insects. I'm not surprised the hogs took them but interesting everything else did too. Great idea

Thanks John, i PM'ed you.
I have ordered the crickets from livefoods.co.uk so i am hoping they arrive soon enough, i don't think i'll feel too bad about freezing them cos the noise they make lol

John great idea...is this something you thought up yourself? I've never heard of it before...is this the end of buying and feeding live insects???

JoeR wrote:i don't think i'll feel too bad about freezing them cos the noise they make lol

I love the noise lol

Weird lol

Tanpira wrote:

JoeR wrote:i don't think i'll feel too bad about freezing them cos the noise they make lol

I love the noise lol

Me too. Reminds me of home. Lol, just as I typed this one cricket sounded out. Besides, escapee crix are fun to catch.

Nice carapace on the G. rosea! My first one was like that. I have three currently, one adult and two slings. I can't wait to see how the slings turn out. The B. smithi and G. rosea are amongst my favourite terrestrial species.

What's her temperment like? Usually they're quite docile but every now and then I come across a mad yoke. How did she lose her legs?

Thanks Spiderman, yeah shes amazing alright!

I have Four Ts at the mo, i have a thread laying around somewhere ha
Definitely the B.Smithi and G.Rosea, although the G.Aureostriata (spelling(?)) is amazing too! my lil chaco is extremely docile, i got them off a member on here who knows a lot and has reared them from slings, amazing T's
My G. Rosea's temperment is great she doesn't flick, none of them do and they don't stand either i've heard some chile roses can be pretty nuts when they want to be haha

JoeR wrote:My G. Rosea's temperment is great she doesn't flick, none of them do and they don't stand either i've heard some chile roses can be pretty nuts when they want to be haha

Lol, I would have said the same thing about mine until tonight. Is there a full moon out tonight or something? She went all psycho on me.