Tarantulas

Every weekend is usually the feeding day of most of our pets with my brother. My brother owns some tarantulas and it also came to a point where he is also taking care of some of my cousin's tarantulas.

Here's one of the cons of keeping tarantulas. The tarantulas are stored inside my room in a shelf. There's a night when my brother was finished using the computer and then he went out and closed the door. I was also about to go outside of the room after a few seconds and suddenly I saw something running fast. I looked at it closely and it was one of the adult spiders of my cousin. I immediately shouted for my brother. We both got catch cups and it was really difficult catching this spider because it was fast. We had to clear the pathway of our stuff to reduce its hiding spot. My brother was the one poking it around and I was able to catch it. It was the second time this happened in my room.

Heres's a photo of the spider that escaped, its species is called Poecilotheria Metallica. I can't imagine getting bitten by this. I've read articles that the venom of this one is strong. You can see how much tape my brother put on its enclosure so it would not flee again.

Here's the shelf that I was talking about. Most of the enclosures have a tarantula inside of them. It used to be 3 shelves but my cousin got his other tarantulas already.

Here's my first ever tarantula it's a Chilobrachys fimbriatus also known as an Indian earth tiger. It's still a spiderling and it's really tiny. I'm still thinking of what to name this small creature. You could see its legs on that small hole. One thing that I love about it is its web. That tiny thing was able to create this much web around his whole enclosure.

As you could see, I fed it a blatta lateralis nymph which was squished. As soon as I placed it on the entrance it ran away. But after a while I checked it again and saw that the cockroach wasn't there anymore so he probably ate it.

Dubia Cockroaches

Here's my colony of Dubai Cockroaches, if you are wondering why the heck am I breeding them, it's because I want my food source to be sustainable for the pets that we have. Instead of buying from a pet store or from random people, I decided to breed them. They are actually easy to breed, I started a colony with only 50 Juvenile Cockroaches, Now I think I have hundreds of them inside my bin. It was also feeding day for them so I gave them some bananas that my mom didn't like. Those bananas were from our backyard.

After around 10 minutes, I decided to check on them and if you look at it, Most of the Adults came out and were flooding them.

While they were all eating, I decided to separate 4 male cockroaches to feed my ants.

Blatta Lateralis

These cockroaches are also known as the Turkestan cockroaches or the red runners. I'm also breeding them but they are as not as much as the Dubias. If you look at the gel, you could see the nymphs of this cockroach. This is what we usually feed the spiderlings because the nymphs of the dubias are too big.

I also gave them a small slice of the banana. As you can see that big one is an adult. That's actually a female.

Ants

Here's the offering that I gave my ants. I decided that they should also get a feast. I fed them the 4 male Dubia Cockroaches. Before placing the dubias in the formicarium of my ants, I usually decapitate them and offer them in my ants' pride rock. I do this because I don't pre-kill them, they usually hide and burrow, If I do that, the tunnels that my ants fixed will all be destroyed. I'm also scared that my queen might die from that incident.

If you look at them, you could see that my ants are in a frenzy. They were all running around and they were extracting the cockroaches. They were also stinging and biting the bodies and legs of the cockroaches.

Later on, I checked on them and they were already extracting the flesh of the cockroaches. If you are curious on what that blue thing is inside their nest, it's their old house. I couldn't remove it because that's where they are storing the eggs and larvae of the incoming ants. The test tube is also for sugar water. That's something that they also love.