Tyron wrote: ... I just joined today because i have a problem with really small white lice in my tanks. They are so small i cant even get a good picture of them. I would appreciate it if you guys could tell me what this lice is and what i did to cause this so that i can prevent it in the future. I am new to the tarantula scene and i have a mexican red knee and a Mexican fire red bird eater.
While you don't outright say so, your post strongly suggests that you're a relative newbie. So, I'm going to abuse you by offering my Newbie Introduction. Even if you're not a newbie, it won't hurt to read it for review.
WELCOME TO THE HOBBY!
:lol:
WELCOME TO THIS FORUM!
:laugh:
DID YOU HEAR THAT? THAT WAS THE NEWBIE ALARM!
Ah! So we're newbies. We've done what everybody else does: Read all the Internet care sheets. Listened attentively to everything the expert down at the local pet shop told us. Wasted a lot of money on things we shouldn't have. Incorporated a lot of things that were useless or even dangerous. Stressed out over meaningless details while ignoring the real issues. Way overkill. That's not a criticism; I'm just delineating the problems. It's just the way humanoids are, I suppose.
We can deal with all that.
There's nothing wrong with being a newbie as long as you do something about it. After 45 years of keeping tarantulas, I still consider myself a newbie. We can trace a tarantula's ancestry back over
HALF A BILLION YEARS. They've had that long to develop and fine tune their lives and lifestyles. They're incredibly complex and detailed creatures. We're gonna be playing catch-up (that's the newbie part) for a long, LONG,
LONG time!
The first thing you need to understand is the
KISS principle
, not to infer that you're stupid. Inexperienced, maybe. Stupid, I don't think so. As proof, you can speak, read, and write English (arguably one of the more difficult languages on Planet Earth), and use a computer just fine. But, I digress. As long as you supply the basic necessities of life for your captive tarantula, the less you incorporate into its cage and care regimen, the less there is to go tragically
haywire
. KISS, indeed!
The second thing you need to understand is that tarantulas are like no other creature you've ever kept or even heard of before. All the ingrained assumptions and prejudices that you've been taught since childhood don't apply, and may even be dangerous to them. They're neither tropical fish, reptiles, canaries, nor gerbils, and you don't take care of them like any of those animals. One of the biggest problems with newbies is trying to get them to abandon all their prejudices and begin to look at the world from the vastly alien perspective of a huge, fuzzy spider.
FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELT.
MAKE SURE YOUR SEAT BACK AND TRAY TABLE ARE SECURED IN THEIR UPRIGHT POSITIONS.
THIS IS GOING TO BE ONE H*** OF A RIDE!
Because tarantulas are so bizarre and unique, you have a lot of homework to do. To begin, you need to read the following webpages.
1)
Stan's Rant
.
ESPECIALLY, READ THE PART ABOUT NOT TRUSTING ANYTHING A PET SHOP TELLS YOU! AND ESPECIALLY, STUDY THE FOUR RECOMMENDED BOOKS.
2)
Myths...
. Read the entire webpage tree.
3)
Care and Husbandry of the Chilean Rose Tarantula
.
IF YOU HAVE A CHILEAN ROSE TARANTULA (Grammostola rosea) YOU NEED TO READ THIS WEBPAGE! If you don't have a Chilean rose you can safely ignore this one for now. Just remember that it's here for whenever you do get a rose. Or, you can read it out of curiosity. It contains a lot of hints applicable to other arid species.
4)
Substrate
. Because you need to know about this very basic, underlying part of a tarantula's existence.
5)
Growing Your Own
. This is a global, game plan for caring for your newfound little buddy. You need to figure out where it is in the vast scheme of growth and development, then start taking care of it properly from that point onward.
6) If you can possibly spare the time, at least skim through the entire
Spiders, Calgary
website.
Lastly, be aware that this system is not the only one available. Neither is it necessarily the best one. You'll see and hear all sorts of other ideas as you go along. But, Marguerite and I have spent decades selling tarantulas to all kinds of people of all ages, and fine tuned this system so as to make it pretty much as bullet proof as it can get. Use our system at first, until you begin to understand these weird animals. Then maybe you can experiment with some of the not-so-conservative approaches recommended by others.
You need to learn to look at the world from the vastly alien perspective of a huge, fuzzy spider.
READ THE BOOKS! READ THE WEBPAGES!
__________________________________________________
There is a 99% probability that the "lice" are either
mites
or
springtails
, only a very small chance that they're something new and bizarre. (But, in Africa, that's a real possibility!)
If they're mites you need to read
Mighty Mites
. Because we can't tell the difference between so-called "good" mites and "bad" mites, we assume they're all bad and forget that consideration entirely. Mites are usually small, cream or white colored, round things that crawl very slowly over the substrate, furnishings, and tarantula. They do not jump.
Springtails are elongate insect-like things that can crawl, but their call to fame is their ability to use a tail-like appendage to launch themselves into space when you disturb them. As you watch them they seem to disappear before your eyes because they're too small and fast for you to notice the leap. Some enthusiasts claim that they're good in a cage because in small numbers they're scavengers. In large numbers they're a nuisance if not an outright danger to your tarantulas.
The presence of either strongly suggests that you're keeping your tarantula cages too damp. Unless you're keeping one of the very few species of tarantula that absolutely require a damp cage, you need to dry out your cages.
Best of luck. Remember, your little 8-legged Yoda is going to be giving you pop quizzes daily!
