+1 Van

Scarab wrote: I also want stripes... So tell me straight Mr Pokie King wiff many stripes, do I pull or do I not? :whistle:

Lol. Said you have more patience than me. Would have pulled long time ago.

T-rad wrote: May I please ask a question. Cerat I saw that you heat your pokies up when you see that they are about to drop. So I've been thinking if one could also heat them up at the first signs of the T becoming gravid thereby imitating it's natural cycle? I've done this with my B. vagans and my G. rosea and have had success in both cases, but those are the only two T's that have become gravid so far so I don't have a lot of experience riding on this, just interested to know what everyone thinks.

You could.
How do you tell what the first signs are of the tarantula being gravid? She could just be well fed?
As i said, the breeding thing is not a flop proof recipe.
Maybe you could heat them earlier. I know mammon doesn't cool at all and he has lots of success. He just tried something different and it worked for him. I have tried not cooling and have 0% success. Experience.

spinnerkop wrote: Interesting Discussion going on here. After reading this maybe we could have some "rough" guidelines on breeding, When to heat and flood the cage which species to flood and which to leave dry? i might be naive in thinking this but isn't there any basic guide lines we can follow and then learn the rest as we go along?

Rough guidelines are pretty easy to give, but they are already well known. Mate, cool, warm, flood, eggcase. As for the timelines it depends on species, temps, individual spiders etc.
I have had pokies drop 2 months after mating and others of the same species take 8 months to drop. The only way I decide to heat & flood is by the "look" of the spider.

Onyx wrote: Ok you do have a point with fly by nights and concede to your opinion as being the better one in this case.

Look at the end of the day I would rather get stock from you or Scarab than some dude in Witbank hehehe yes that guy with the invisible T's.

And yes stripes needs to be earned but we all have to start somewhere.

k I might have been a bit hasty in my opinion. lol But we are all here to discuss and chat hehehe

No worries.
I am always willing to help where possible and have recieved many calls/PM's/emails and given advice. People just don't always realise that it is not a full proof recipe that I can give. I breed my spiders by "feel" rather than gauges and clocks. Seems to work for me, but might not work for the next person. So we learn.

So anyone looking for breeding info on pokies, drop me a mail. Just not all at once please.

Wasn't this the whole point of having a breeding report section? Anyway apologies if I have posted this before but on another forum I came up with a template for a breeding report that has what I feel (from my limited breeding experience anyway) are the key information points for breeding tarantulas. The other forum uses vBulletin and so we were able to make it so that when a member starts a new thread the template comes up automatically and the user fills it out much like an on line form. By doing it like that all breeding reports have the same information in them and it stops the reports descending into the usual "I've mated my spiders" (with a couple of pics) followed by a lot of "good luck" type replies or "I've got an egg sac" (with a couple of pics) followed by a lot of "congratulations" type posts that tell you bugger all about what they actually did to get a sac. I'm not sure if you can do this on Kunena forums but if you can then this is definitely the way to go.
As already stated breeding tarantulas is very much a trial and error process and what works for one person may well not work for another. That said if everyone does fill out a breeding report for each species that they attempt to breed and it is in the same format then we may be able to see if there are certain factors that can be attributed to a successful sac for particular species or at least show someone another way if their previous attempts have failed.
Anyway here is an example of what i'm talking about -

Genus

Poecilotheria

Species

subfusca

Date female moulted last

October 2008

Date male matured

Unknown

Last mating date

10th February 2009

Mating behaviour

The male wandered around the sides of the tank tapping away then sat outside the females hide still tapping. The female then came out of her hide and after a couple of minutes of them tapping each others front legs the male lifted the female up, got a couple of quick inserts and ran off.

Tank conditions and temperatures before mating

The female was kept in a glass custom aquaria tank approx 8.5 x 8.5 x 15" high with a couple of inches of slightly moist peat substrate and a bamboo tube hide. The temperature was kept at around 72 - 74F

Feeding schedule before mating

The female was fed approximately 3 or 4 adult crickets a month.

Tank conditions and temperatures after mating

After mating the tank was kept at around 72 -74F still and the substrate was left to dry out. At the start of May 2009 i soaked the substrate in the tank and raised the temperature to 78F.

Feeding schedule after mating

I continued to feed the female around 3 adult crickets a month.

Date eggsac produced

22nd May 2009

Date eggsac removed/hatched

Sac pulled on 12th June 2009

Development times of nymphs

Eggs developed into eggs with legs on 14th June 2009 then developed into nymph 2 on 3rd July 2009. The nymphs finally developed into slings on the 29th July 2009

Total number of spiderlings

54 slings from 77 eggs

Additional notes

-

Status

Success