I have a friend who got himself an A. purpurea sling a few months ago. It seemed to have disappeared a few days ago.
The container it was in is pretty much escape proof. It's a 32 oz. deli cup with a lid from a pre-packaged cup of crickets - the kind with a big hole cut out from the top with a screen covering.
Anyway, he said his T was looking very weak and fell from a leaf toward the top of the container and then made its way back up eventually. During this time, there were about 5 or 6 crickets in there with the T.
It was probably about 3 days later that he noticed the T was gone. He brought the container in to work yesterday and I carefully removed the fake plants and dug out all the substrate (peat moss) and there was no trace of the T.
There was only one cricket in there at this time, but it was dead. One thing I've noticed when keeping crickets for a while, they eventually start eating each other, but almost always leave scraps. Here, there were no T scraps. Could they have eaten the entire T? Again, there was no trace of it -- not even a part of a leg, or anything.
Thanks.
Lick496
I doubt they ate every piece, but itts possible i guess
Celeste
If it was small and sick, and if there were 5 or 6 starving crickets in there with it, I would think so...
Krawll
I agree with all of the above.
You should tell your friend to never put more than one cricket in the container with his T. cuz she won't eat more than 1 or 2 per week as a sling i'm guessing.
I was realy surprised myself to see how crickets can start to cannibalize eatchother when there is no food available around. So now i cut tiny pieces of carrots and give it to them so they stay alive longer otherwise i lose more than half of the amount that i buy everytime. I also put a few pieces of carrots in the container with my smaller spiders so the crickets won't start ''eyeing'' the spider.
Also tell your friend, if he can't find any crickets smaller than the spider, he can injure one and then drop it right next to the T. I've only started doing that recently cuz my young wolf spider wasn't able to kill them. It does work . I use a tweeser and i pinch the cricket right behind the head. I realy hate having to do that but i do what i need to, to keep my pets alive :-)
I wish your friend a better luck with his next T.
ftorres
Hello,
Crickets are nasty little beasts.
they ate the T no doubt.
francisco
GOMER113
Thanks for the replies. I was surprised that I couldn't find any signs of a tarantula living in there other than the webbing on the leaves. He learned his lesson and will be more careful next time. He's got an A. versicolor on the way and he will take much better care of this one. I did tell him that on the bright side, the living conditions such as humidity and the like looked perfect.
