Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello,

It's my 2 1/2 inch Brazilian White-Kneed Bird Eater again. I have it on a substrate of 1/2 inch good, soft soil. Any deeper and I assume his roach nymphs will burrow out of reach. I put drops of water on the substrate about once a week to give a period of humidity. It's 80F. in the Critter Carrier, and it's clean. The length of the Carrier is about five times his diameter, and the depth is three times his diameter.

My question is about feeding lobster roaches. He has one 1" white pre-adult Lobster along with 5/16th inch nymphs in there with him to feed on. I never see evidence he eats, so I'm worried. The nymphs burrow, and stay alive. I just hope that at night the T ferrets out the nymphs when he's hungry. I can easily find the nymphs by gently probing the soil with a pencil tip. I have no idea how the breeder could say my T was eating two roaches per week unless he was keeping the it on a substrate-free floor.

This T molted once, about three weeks after I got him. I've only had him since April. He does not give any feedback to show me how he's doing. (Neither does my Red-Knee'd, but at least he grows.)

Roger

It's ok to help your T. to get it's food

I don't usualy leave crickets in the tank with my Tarrantula.
He tells me he's hungry when i see him moving alot. When he's not hungry he climbs on a side of the tank or something else. When he's hungry he goes back to ground lvl and changes spot alot.

When i feed him i put the cricket right beside him and he usualy snaps it the same second the cricket hits the ground. If he misses, i block the cricket from getting too far from the spider and i repeat the process untill my T. catches it.

If your tarrantula ignores food even when you drop it right next to it , that means it's actualy preparing for another molt. Don't worry about her. When she's hungry she will accept food.

those burrowing roaches are probably only good if you give her one at a time by droping it next to the spider the same way i do with crickets. I don't think your T. will dig them out. In fact you should try it right now lol. Maybe your T. is hungry and she simply has no idea there is food under her feet

You can always determine whether your T. is starving or well fed by the size of the abdomen compared to the size of her thorax. As long as her abdomen isn't smaller than her cephalothorax, she isn't in danger.

Good luck

Krawll