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Alright so this is the deal. First of all I'd like to thank this website and all of its members for all their help. I am now the woner of a beautiful rose hair, and keeping her has been a very rewarding experience. Here's my question. I know that rose hairs go on these "fasts" from time to time. And mine is going through one right now. She hasn't eatten in about a month or so. Is there anything that would make a rose hair stop eatting, how long and frequent are these fasts, and what should I be doing now. I've been offering crickets to her about one a week, and taking them out after about 24 hours when she doesn't eat them.

What you are doing sounds perfect. And the fast is perfectly normal. My first G. rosea didn't eat a single thing for 9 months. I tried every week at first, then reduced to trying once a month after a couple months. It really all depends how long it has been in this country, as to how long it's fast will last, see below.

The following is taken from Stanley Schultz's G. rosea care sheet located here:

http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~schultz/roses.html

It should explain in detail, what exactly is going on with your T.

Chilean roses pose a special problem. If they weren't so hardy they'd make lousy pets. The problem is this: They evolved in the southern hemisphere and their seasons are reversed to ours. (Here I'm assuming that you live in the northern hemisphere as the majority of tarantula keepers do.) And, they seem to have a particularly hard time adjusting to northern hemisphere timetables.

Think of it this way. In the Atacama they experience seasonal fluctuations in temperature, water/humidity availability, day length, and food availability. They use one, some or all of these to entrain their annual cycles, to synchronize their lives with the rest of Mother Nature. Their species evolved in this absolutely predictable waltz of variations. Each individual tarantula has grown up in these conditions.

Then somebody snatches them out their lair and ships them to the other side of the planet. Worse yet, we keep them in a house with thermostatically controlled heat. There goes any temperature clues to let them readjust to the new time table.
We get up and turn the lights on every morning at 6:30 or 7:00 AM and the house is well lit until we turn the lights off at 10:30 or 11:00 PM. And this never changes regardless of what season of the year it is. We've just removed day length as a clue.

Worse yet, in nature they're preprogrammed to eat as much food as available in preparation for the coming famine season. (There's ALWAYS a coming famine season!) During the famine season they may go hungry for several months before food becomes plentiful again, another seasonal clue. In captivity we give them all the food they'll eat and, out of instinct, they eat everything that we throw at them. We overfeed them thinking that they're starved and they don't stop eating until they're obese. Even then the food STILL keeps coming! There is no string of light meals followed by a few months of fasting. This destroys any food availability clues completely.

Lastly, in the Atacama, as dry as it is, there are dry seasons and damp seasons. It may not rain often, but from time to time fog banks roll in from the Pacific Ocean and generally moisten everything for a few hours to several days. And, this tends to happen seasonally. In your home its always bone dry, but you always keep a dish of water in the cage. Oops! There goes another clue.

The result is that this species more than almost any other gets really confused about what season of the year it is. Because we've removed all their clues they don't know when to start eating again once they get too fat and stop. Neither do they know when it should be time to molt. They may go 2 years or more without eating or molting, before they finally pick up the few very subtle clues available to synchronize with the local seasons.

If this happens to your rose you should try to supply the missing clues. Keep it in a warm place in Summer and a cool place in Winter. Try to keep it in a room where artificial lighting isn't used very much so it can see a normal change in day length. Don't feed it all it will eat when you get it. Four to 6 crickets all at once, repeated ONLY every 2 weeks is more than enough. If it stops eating for an extended period of time, don't worry. Offer it a few crickets every 2 or 3 weeks. If it doesn't eat them, remove the crickets after several days and try again two or three weeks later. When it does begin to eat again, give your rose ONLY 4 to 6 crickets every 2 weeks regardless of how hungry you think it might be.
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KJ Vezino
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