There is not much happening inside the enclosure at the moment.

I do see some of the adopted babies from time to time, they seem to happily live with their stepmother. It is impossible to say if all ten I gave her are still alive, but I have a feeling they are.

The original five youngsters are very secretive. Their nest have expanded dramatically, but if all five are still alive I can't say.

A few folks have started communal enclosures with babies they got from me. I have not had any reports of cannibalism.

The idea of this huge environment is to leave them to their own devices. I can not break nests to see what they are up to, I will have to wait until some individual nests appear to be able to judge the success of this experiment, but so far so good...

Thanks Scarab.

I will start work on the construction of my tank at the end of the month. I'm sure I'll be asking you plenty of questions.

This might be a stupid question, but do you think you will have slings and juvies available by march/april? I realise now, the subadult female was a little optimistic on my part.

I am sure I will have some available if you want to start a communal. My October egg case yielded 78 babies and one other female created an egg case on new years day. If all goes well there, they should hatch by mid February. A third female looks like she will explode soon, so hopefully she makes a sac before the end of January. I doubt there will be a shortage for those who want to do the same...

Scarab... don't say stuff like that around me
I may be tempted to get some more babies for my communal!

Just a note on what you said previously, I'm not entirely sure, but I think I may have lost one sling. At any given time, I can only spot four. Then again, their nest is pretty damn dense. Either he is in there, hiding, or a cricket got him while he was molting, but I refuse to believe he was killed by the others.

Other then that, doing just fine.

Visser, go for it! You won't be disappointed!

I would go with "natural causes" rather than cannibalism. I found that they remain out of sight when they molt, so it might be that four of yours are out and about while one is in pre molt, molting or in post molt. This might alternate amongst the five. It is also possible that one has died for whatever reason, but I seriously doubt a cricket is to blame. A cricket would have to penetrate the nest to get to a molting spider, all of this while the four other spiders "are turning a blind eye" ?? Some brave freaken crickets you have there mate...

I'm pretty sold on the idea already, Swifty. I'm also quite keen to get started on the tank. I have some awesome ideas.

I must admit that I'm a little apprehensive about the cost involved, and the possible loss of slings due to cannibalism. Reading Scarab's thread and your posts, I'm fairly confident it will work out well.

Actually, I can't wait to get started now. These next few months are going to drag by.