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Spider in Hiding

texastailfeathers

texastailfeathers

New member
We haven't seen our g. aureostriata (chaco) tarantula in about two weeks now. He buried himself, blocked the entrance to his hide, and he hasn't surfaced even to eat.

Should we assume he is preparing to shed and will come out when he's ready, or should we pick up the hide to make sure he's still alive?

He's pretty small still (3-4in) so I'm pretty sure he should be eating regularly...but it's hard to eat when you've buried yourself under a wooden hide. :)
 
3/4" or 3-4"?

Either way, I wouldn't bother it. It's a pretty normal behavior, mine sometimes do the same thing when they are molting. You don't want to stress it out if it's in the middle of a molt.

Continue to provide water and maybe disabled prey but remove if it doesn't eat it after a while, even overnight.
 
Flagg said:
3/4" or 3-4"?
Click to expand...

Three to four inches. Fairly young...not newly hatched.

Yeah, he has water...we've tried putting crickets in there on his normal feeding days, but he doesn't come out for them and we take them back out.

Is this what they do when they're getting ready to molt, or is this just normal antisocial spider behavior?
 
Probably getting ready to molt, if they blocked off the burrow entrance. And you don't want to leave any living crickets in there as they could actually hurt the T if it's in the middle of molting.

Once molted give them at least several days to harden up before offering new food.

I'm a bit extra careful about molts these days, as one of my 2" G.Aureostriata spiderlings died stuck in the middle of a molt a few weeks back.
 
Where's Waldo?? She'd know! She's the Queen of Ts!

How frustrating, take an already incomprehensible creature and then have it do a mystery behaviour...

Nanci
 
Leave him alone, at that size he could stay hidden for a couple months before he molts. I know its tempting to dig him up but if he was dead it would smell really bad.

This is why I have so many tarantulas (28 now), I always have a few visible:)
 
Welcome to the wonderful world of Tarantula keeping. ;)
I seem to remember warning someone with interest to make the cage look interesting, cause that's what they'd be seeing most of the time.

Blocking off the entrance to their burrow is a natural thing to do. It doesn't necessarily mean that the T will molt. Actually, one of my Ts just molted (first time for me, yay!), and one thing I noticed as very odd was that her burrow was NOT silked off.
 
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