# SOS Tarantula (first aid to your pet)



## evanevy (Feb 17, 2008)

i'm a portuguese guy, i'm sorry if my english isnt the best, still hope to do my best.
This is the information i gathered through my experience with spiders.
left a copy of this in some other foruns and people gave me a good feedback, so i'm posting it here too, =)

i'll try to discribe the most common things that can happen to your tarantula and the things you can do, =) hope you find this topic useful and even share information to me

TRAUMA - it's possible that a tarantula has a trauma, it can happen just by falling, when it tries to climb the tank, or maybe when you handle it. It can happen if you have a stupid cat as I do. Any situation that causes a hole in the tarantulas body, an exposure of the inside should be treated as a trauma. In human would be a wound.

FIRST THING! ANALYSE! - You should first see the place where the wound is, if it's in a joint, just dont do anything or you'll immobilize the tarantulas' leg. just let a small amount of hemolymph come out, if it stops bleeding, then it's fine.

If not you have to go for a dramatic solution. you should take its' leg off. when you take it off,it should be just as near as possible to the tarantulas body, it happens just as in human, there is a really strong muscle contraction that will stop the bleeding. This procedure is named as autotomy, and should only be performed after studying it, still as this is to be made in an emergency situation, you should know about it already, 

When yous spider has the tip of its' leg wounded, maybe broken, or eaten, you should take the whole leg off because the bleeding wont stop. If it stops, the scar in the leg will raise the probability of a bad molting, the spider may be able to take that leg of when molting, but it may not too...









just use a tweezer, as near to her as possible and make a strong and quick pull of the leg, it should take it off, you may need another tweezer to grab the spider.

when the wound is not in a joint, then you may just put super glue, dont worry it will be off when the tarantula molt. you may use that nail liquid girls use.

DEHYDRATION AND STARVATION- the tarantulas loses strenght and stop moving, maybe a litlle curved under itself, its' abdomen will be a litlle wrinkled, and shrinked, to help in this situation you should give a wide water sourse to your tarantula, and make it go there, it's normal if she takes hours drinking, you'll notice her getting better by the hour.
Tarantulas may be as much time as 1 to 2 years without food, still, some may starve to death within 2 months, so you must be careful with that, when a tarantulas stops eating it may be for being in premolt, for being obese, for having an infection, or just being lazy. If you see that your tarantulas abdomen is too small, and it doesnt eat. you should look for nematod infection (discussed later in this article), if it's not infected then, just squeze a cricket, and make your tarantulas pedipalps touch the internal organs of the cricket, so it can "smell" it, then, just leave it, the tarantula should eat it at night, keep ofering more 2 or 3 crickets like that, then you can try the alive ones.

MYCOSIS - yes, tarantulas get mycosis just as we do. The whole kingdom of FUNGI Like some things : food, dark, and moist! So you keep this 3 things too much time in your tank, mold will start growing, first in the tarantulas food or even substrate, then in the tarantula, and it will infect the booklunges, sooner or later and kill the tarantula. They normally atack the abdomen, the leg tips, prossoma and booklunges, so be careful. 
To treat a fungal infection, you should use IODOPOVIDONE, (there should be a mark of this in your country, that dark brown liquid we use to sterilize our wounds) at 10% and put it in the infected zone, in some extreme cases should put the tarantula in alcohol. But the first procedure you should use is, a normal spoon of iodopovidone 10% in a litter of water, no worry to use 2, lol, and use the moister to pulveryze your tarantula and the substrate, better if in a ICU.
NONE OF THIS PROCEDURES CURE YOUR TARANTULA. but it will slow down the infection, while the immune sistem of your pet should take care of the matter.

NEMATODES - These are the worst thing that can happen to your tarantula. It will stop feeding right away. there will be a white juice under it's mouth, the tarantula will spend more time near the water, and will have it's pedipalps almost always under it. To confirm the infection you should take a litlle sample of it, put the sample in a small amount of water, and look carefulli to the floor of the cup, you should see some microscopic things moving.
if you find a tarantula infected with nematods, you should separate it from your whole collection, this is infectious. Now many people say, just put in the freezer and kill it before your whole colection is infected. I had some tarantulas infected , just near my collection and it didnt infected the others, cause i use asseptic procedure when dealing with it, (i'm nurse, it's easy for me to use it, but it's not easy for a regular person). First thing is, the last tarantula you should take care is the infected, so you wont infect the others. then, use separate material for the infected one, a different brush, a differente pencil, different water. etc... AND DONT LET SMALL INSECT FLOW THROUGH THE BOXES CAUSE THAT WILL BE A GOOD VECTOR FOR THE PARASITE.

Now you have to make your choice, :S you kill the tarantula, or you pv me and keep my studies to see if I as a microbiologist can stop this freaking disease, i believe that if we find the infection while the tarantula has enough strenght i can cure it, so if any of you guys find this in an early stage please tell me, our partners have failed trying to cure this infection, even the most careful, but they have been doing research in antibiotics as tetracycline to stop some bacteria the nematods need to complete their life cycle. As a matter of fact, tetracycline is a bacteriostat, it stops the growing of the bacteria, but it doenst kill it. I'm using another drug that killed the nematods infection, but my t was too weak to keep going, right now i have to feed it from a needle, :S it almost doesnt move at all...

That was my first case of the infection, i infected some other to keep my studying, and it has been really good to make some progress, i already cured 1, an adult one, 3 juvenil died i think from the medication secundary effects, and other 4 are still under therapy to see what will happen, i believe that reducing the concentration of this drug and ading an antibiotic may boost the effect to this parasite.

if you are under this cir****sances please pv me.

HIPOTHERMIA - when your tarantulas travel from or for another country it can go under temperatures not much aprecciated by them. in this situation they'll stop moving, seem to be alive, but doesnt move. In this situation put it in an ICU for 3 days, warm and moist and some may recover, some may not, =) better to try.

ICU - a small box with moist towels as substrate and warmed.

I wont talk about mites, cause i never experienced it, so i dont think i'm the one who should talk about it
hope i made a helpful thread, tkx guys


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## Elaine R (Feb 2, 2008)

Very helpful indeed. Excellent post :2thumb:


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## Nebbz (Jan 27, 2008)

very helpful, and your english is better than mine! :no1:


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## tilly790 (Jan 24, 2008)

Very informative & your english is better than my portuguese :2thumb:


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## evanevy (Feb 17, 2008)

*tkx*

rkx guys, if someone knew about mites and could post it, i think this should make a good sticky, 

tkx a lot, =)


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