Evening All

On arriving home last night from our trip to Secunda, I went and checked on my spiders and saw my S.Calceatum had molted, so being after 21:00 I was not in the mood to mess around with the lady and remove the molt.

This afternoon I decided to go check on her and remove the molt, and when I touched the molt she started moving around, I thought she was attacking the molt, which would be normal for this lady, so I cleared some of her webbing out of the way and touched the molt again, and noticed when I pull the molt she came with it, all of a sudden a light went on and instantly thought she was stuck.

So I cleared all the webbing and her hide away and sure enough she was stuck in her molt.
Me and this lady have had past history as she was the one that bit me.

So being as gentle as I can I was able to remove her from her enclosure.
Got her on the table and started cutting the molt away and wetting the bit that was stuck to her leg, was still planning on what I was going to do.
If I was going to cut her out of her old skin or leave her to sort it out.

She was fairly still through out the process, then all of a sudden she started moving and broke off the leg herself.
Which helped me in a sense, as I was starting to get closure to the sharp end.

She seems to be fine, I choose to put her back into her enclosure.
I have just increased the humidity by wetting a patch of substrate and giving her a small water dish, also poured water by her mouth part so she can drink.
If she pulls through then awesome, if she dies then that is sad, but that is part of the hobby.
The main thing is, I have left her alone so she can rest and build up strength if she decides to pull through.

You can see the colouration of the leg in the first picture, it went black.




The second picture is after she broke her leg off.



So leg 5 and 6 are off at base of carapace and right pedipulper is deformed and is bent.
Only time will tell.

Never nice seeing a tarantula in this position
Hope your girl pulls through .
Do you think it was a humidity problem ?

Thanks.

Not to sure, I have not been flooding my enclosure like I normally do as I have been having issue with mushroom spores or
when I notice a spider is in pre-molt or stops eating I normally wet the substrate to prevent any problems with molting.

It could also be that she had webbed herself up to tight and did not have enough space to push out, as the molting chamber was pretty small. but she caught me off guard though was not expecting her to molt out.
The room humidity is on average 65% to 80% percent, depending on how much rain we have had and how hot the sun gets.
If the Humidity drops to much I normally wet the walls and add a bucket of warm water into the room.

Whenever a T of mine is molting I just chuck it infront of the humidifier and everything goes smooth ,
Best of luck ,hope she recovers ,keep us updated

I hope your lady pulls through cascade, she is such a beauty. Will be holding thumbs that she will turn out fine, it is never nice seeing T's in such situations.

Hey Cas you got an update for us on this one? hope all is well!!!!!!