Poecilotheria fasciata (Sri Lankan Ornamental)

I have attempted to breed my 22cm female a couple of times previously but she generally tends to eat the males when thy don't get the job done within a few hours....
Nothing changed when I introduced Mezzo's male, they both tapped at each other like crazy and she hounded him for quite a while (he kept backing away) until she seemed to finally lose patience and chomped him.
I then used Hendrij's male and the mating was successful



I didn't think anything had come of the mating as my female has a very heavily vegetated enclosure and I hadn't seen anything for a couple of months. Kept them in my T room at a slightly elevated room temperature of around 24 deg. C and a lowish humidity of around 50%
One fine day however, I noticed a discarded eggsac.



It looked unhatched and was very disappointed to cut it open and find one dead sling and what 'looked' like a bunch of dried up eggs with legs. (later realized they were actually molts)
Days later however, I spotted a 1st instar sling in the terrarium and upon closer inspection, I discovered tons of the little critters gathered around their huge mamma!!!! :woohoo:



Note that super cute pokie pattern on their opisthosoma's!
They have since moulted into nice healthy looking 2nd instars and although I have not been able to make an accurate count of them due to the nature of the enclosure, their seem to be somewhere in the vicinity of 100.

Will be separating them shortly and updating....
Also my second smaller female has now also dropped an eggsac :thumbsup:

Wow congrats bud, that is so cool, how long do you usually keep the Instars with the mom?

Well they all seem to be doing very nicely deep into 2nd instar but I'm not going to risk them together longer. I'm pretty sure they would still be ok another moult or two longer though....

Is there any particular reason for keeping them with the mother? Why can't you just take them out when they are 1st instar, is there not a risk of the mom eating the little ones.

I'm not overly experienced with Poecilotheria's but from what I've heard it's generally a good idea too leave them with their mother till at least 2nd instar, she tends to do a better job nurturing them than humans could possibly do to that point.

Taki wrote: I'm not overly experienced with Poecilotheria's but from what I've heard it's generally a good idea too leave them with their mother till at least 2nd instar, she tends to do a better job nurturing them than humans could possibly do to that point.

cool beanz, thanks for the info. cant believe how much i have learned from this forum in such a short time. you must update with more pictures!!!!