Tarantulas don’t often eat their molt.
Usually, as soon as a tarantula has molted, you can find the molted pores and skin nonetheless inside their cage. For tarantulas that select to molt out within the open, this pores and skin will likely be virtually immediately seen.
Nonetheless in tarantulas that molt down a burrow, or in a chunk of cork bark, it might be a while earlier than you truly see the pores and skin.
In my expertise many (although not all) tarantulas that molt out of view will “dispose” of their pores and skin afterward. They’ll truly carry it out of their disguise and dump it elsewhere within the cage to maintain their dwelling hygienic. This appears to take round 2 weeks between a tarantula molting in a burrow, and them eradicating the undesirable pores and skin.
One frustration in relation to tarantula molting is that whereas they don’t usually eat their pores and skin, they could nonetheless chew it up of their chelicerae. This may take an ideal, specimen-quality molt and chew it as much as one thing virtually unrecognizable.
There are two annoyances with this.
Molts Not Price Preserving
Many tarantula keepers wish to retain sloughed skins as a memento. In fact, a molt that has received “chewed up” and is now shredded and battered isn’t ideally suited to this pursuit.
Unsexable Molts
Until your tarantula is a mature grownup, the one most dependable technique to inform whether or not your tarantula is a boy or a lady is to look at a molted pores and skin below a microscope or hand lens.
For the inexperienced keeper, there is only one explicit space it is advisable to study. This additionally, annoyingly, tends to be essentially the most fragile a part of the molt, and due to this fact the half most definitely to be broken.
I’ve some fairly massive tarantulas which can be nonetheless unsexed as they all the time appear to chew up the pores and skin at simply the incorrect place. Hopefully in the long run my persistence will repay.
The temptation with a tarantula that has simply molted is to keep away from both of those points by immediately eradicating the pores and skin. A tarantula that hasn’t hardened up but after a molt is much much less prone to have chewed up their pores and skin, similar to when eradicating it from their burrow.
The draw back to this, is it includes disturbing the tarantula when it’s feeling most fragile. Clearly that is one thing we ought to be avoiding.
Due to this fact I’d implore you to depart a recently-molted tarantula to do it’s factor for a number of weeks earlier than you go searching for the pores and skin. Allow them to harden up. Allow them to have a drink, and perhaps one thing to eat. Then as soon as they’re again to “regular” you possibly can retrieve the previous pores and skin.
Methods to Take away a Molted Tarantula Pores and skin
Eradicating a molted tarantula pores and skin is generally very simple certainly. That is particularly so for those who’re affected person, and await the tarantula itself to “dump” the pores and skin within the nook of the cage.
I usually simply use lengthy forceps to select the pores and skin as much as preserve fingers away from my spiders.
Making an attempt to select up the pores and skin by one or two legs makes most sense if you wish to attempt to intercourse the pores and skin. It is because you keep away from doing any potential harm to the delicate space that must be inspected.
What To Do With A Molted Tarantula Pores and skin
When tarantulas molt there are three frequent issues you possibly can can with them:
- Throw them away
- Maintain them
- Intercourse them
Throw Them Away
That is the best and quickest possibility. Simply dump it within the bin or, like me, put it in your compost heap.
Maintain Them
When tarantulas molt, their sloughed pores and skin is tender and pliable. Over time, nonetheless, the pores and skin dries out and turns into brittle.
If you happen to’d wish to preserve your tarantula molts it may be clever to dampen them once more, so that they as soon as extra turn into “workable”.
I simply soak them in a small jar of water, with a number of drops of dish cleaning soap. Go away the pores and skin for round half an hour.
The pores and skin can then be taken out of the water, and punctiliously manipulated in order that it appears one thing extra “tarantula-like”.
Left to dry for a number of hours, it ought to then completely stay within the pose you will have chosen.
Intercourse Them
This subject would require an entire article of its personal, however it’s potential to inform the gender of a tarantula from their molted pores and skin.
Like within the earlier level, the pores and skin ought to be soaked to make it pliable, and the pores and skin can then be inspected rigorously with a microscope (for small skins) or a hand lense (for bigger ones) to see if it’s male or feminine.
For bigger tarantulas it might be potential to visually intercourse them with out the necessity for any costly gear; the feminine’s spermatheca for instance will be simply seen by eye in larger tarantulas.