# DANGER: Spiders in the terrarium



## melissa68

Up until today, I didn't think having the occasional spider in the frog room or a terrarium was any big deal. That was until I got off the phone with Mike Novy of Rainforest Junkies a few minutes ago. 

A couple weeks ago, he noticed a spider scurring along the wall with a tiger leg froglet in his mouth. The spider wasn't HUGE, but he was booking with his prize. 

Last night, he opened his reticulatus tank and found the most disgusting thing! He found his pair of reticulatus hanging in a spider web inside the tank. One of the breeders had just been captured and the spider had his fangs in the frog making a meal. The other one had been killed earlier in the day, and was entombed in a web. 

I wanted to post this (with Mike's permission) and let people know that spiders in your frog room and terrariums is not as safe as we previously thought. There have been discussions in the past regarding spiders in tanks and the frog room, and the conclusion to the discussion was - their presense was useful with catching stray fruit flies.

I know now this is not the case! I am sure quite a few of you are going to read this note, and go on a spider hunt today, I know I am. Good luck, and I hope this story will prevent others from having an experience like Michael!!!

Thanks,

Melis


----------



## Guest

What the hell kind of spiders do you guys have that will pick up and carry a frog? I'd be afraid myself.


----------



## Guest

Thats awful. thanks for the heads up! *off to the frog room*


----------



## bbrock

Just remember that all spiders are not created equal and the majority of what we find in our houses are indeed harmless to our frogs and, in fact, make excellent food for the frogs. Ambush predators like jumping spiders could pose a threat to small frogs as could many of the web weaving spiders. That said, what is the best safeguard against spiders? I argue that tank design is the biggest problem. All of the most experienced froggers I know reccomend fruit fly tight enclosures for frogs. Not only does this insure the frogs can't escape but it does two things with regard to spiders. First it reduces the number of ff crawling around the room to feed the spider population. Second it prevents all but the smallest spiders from entering the tanks. In a pdf tank, a small spider is usually an eaten spider. Now I happen to like spiders alot but in the house I think they are a bigger pain than escaped ff - ff don't spin webs that collect dust. We are contemplating eventually releasing a couple of house geckos in our frogroom to take care of spider and ff patrol.


----------



## EverettC

If you are in the Washington area be carefull of wolf spiders. I find them a lot around my house and they'd easily take out anything they wanted to in a frog tank.


----------



## melissa68

Brent,

Good points about tight enclosures. I know I will be reviewing mine over the next few weeks.

Both Mike and us are in Ohio and the spider population has exploded this year. Anyone else seen more than usual?

Melis



bbrock said:


> Just remember that all spiders are not created equal and the majority of what we find in our houses are indeed harmless to our frogs and, in fact, make excellent food for the frogs. Ambush predators like jumping spiders could pose a threat to small frogs as could many of the web weaving spiders. That said, what is the best safeguard against spiders? I argue that tank design is the biggest problem. All of the most experienced froggers I know reccomend fruit fly tight enclosures for frogs. Not only does this insure the frogs can't escape but it does two things with regard to spiders. First it reduces the number of ff crawling around the room to feed the spider population. Second it prevents all but the smallest spiders from entering the tanks. In a pdf tank, a small spider is usually an eaten spider. Now I happen to like spiders alot but in the house I think they are a bigger pain than escaped ff - ff don't spin webs that collect dust. We are contemplating eventually releasing a couple of house geckos in our frogroom to take care of spider and ff patrol.


----------



## Devin Edmonds

Thanks for the heads up Melissa. I remember reading about spiders eating juvenile Uroplatus phantasticus and ebenaui, both of which are the size of or larger than most dart frog metamorphs. It doesn't surprise me that they took out Mike's reticulatus. 

I can't imagine a frog room without spiders though, it just doesn't seem possible. I tried to keep up with the spiders when I first moved all of my animals downstairs but eventually they took over down there just like they had when I had my frogs upstairs. Keeping a frog room spider-free would probably involve a good 10 to 20 minutes a day sweeping behind tanks, under stands and above lights, time that could be spent setting up fruit fly cultures or hunting for eggs.


----------



## Jace King

this must be a unique situation, i feed spiders on a regualr basis. they never get much bigger than dime. but they never reach adulthood in a tank. that being said i would worry about my retics. they are just so small anything could hurt them. i dont mind them and they dont bother me, but if i find one any where near my retics it will be removed.
Thanks for the story


----------



## EDs Fly Meat

*NAIB*

For those of you who have been to NAIB. They used to have some orb spider from madagasgar? In the pumilio display. They still might. It was supposed to catch the stray feeder insects, but it occasionally got a pumilio. Population control? I'm not sure. I am curious if anyone knows more about this.
Dave


----------



## Derek Benson

WOW! I must have missed this thread. Mike has never mentioned this to me over the phone before. I see a few small spiders around and usually eliminate them. I can't believe a spider could carry a tiger leg froglet, that's amazing. I will be emptying my room as soon as my rack is done to rearrange and I will go around and kill any and all bugs. With the rack, the spiders or others can't get through, so no worries.


----------



## Derek Benson

Am I out of it or what? This thread was posted today....


----------



## Guest

Speaking of loose geckos. i have a couple of Tokays that roam my lizard room (not where i keep my frogs), to control any spiders or escaped crickets.


----------



## Guest

i live in a rural area and i have tons of spiders and webs in my frog room. But all my tanks are airtight and i clean once a week with a shopvac, so i have never seen a spider in the tanks. i definitely have never seen a spider big enough to catch a frog! of course i have some pretty hefty tincs and smaller frogs might have a problem, but i clean them all out reguarly so they dont get that big.


----------



## Guest

*spiders*

I learned a long time ago that keeping frogs means keeping a somewhat healthy spider population. As others mentioned earlier I would rather have a few dead fruitflys in the corners underneath tanks than have fruitflys walking 2 rooms away from my frog room. First time I have heard of this but I knew of the Cincinnati Zoo losing baby dart frogs to cockroaches (they found them actually eating them on a couple of occassions). The real question here is "what makes those insects in Ohio so danged aggressive???"


----------



## Guest

*Re: spiders*



Mark Pulawski said:


> The real question here is "what makes those insects in Ohio so danged aggressive???"


cause ohio spiders are "corn-fed"
:lol:


----------



## melissa68

*Re: spiders*

lol...I almost typed the same answer. I also have a theory that the spiders in Cleveland & Cincy are big because of genetic mutations from industrial waste....but the "corn-fed" was better!



idea said:


> Mark Pulawski said:
> 
> 
> 
> The real question here is "what makes those insects in Ohio so danged aggressive???"
> 
> 
> 
> cause ohio spiders are "corn-fed"
> :lol:
Click to expand...


----------



## Guest

I saw those same big spiders at the The National Aquarium In Baltimore. I was really perplexedby this because the spiders are like 5 times the size of the frogs i asked the woman there but she said they dont eat the frogs. I dont know, it was kind of weird.


----------



## trinacliff

*Scary*

Wow, what a horrible thing to have happen...now, what is the general consensus about the best way to remove the spiders? Shopvac? Will this kill the babies too? I have seen gobs of adult spiders sitting around egg sacs and now, more recently, tons of baby spiders. A broom probably wouldn't get all the babies. I have chams too, so they must love to live in there with all the escapee crickets I have roaming the room. I have seen some sort of gecko in there hanging out, but my guess is that he likes the crickets better than the spiders...otherwise the spider population shouldn't be booming like it is.

So, any good suggestions about what works best??? Time to get to work after hearing this!

Thanks
Kristen


----------



## rompida

I can second the warning. I lost several imitator froglets a few years ago to a rather large wolf spider. I wasn't sure what was happening to them until I shined a flashlight in the tank one night and saw the reflection of the spider's eyes. He was a monster. I spent the next couple of days trying to find him in the tank. He took out a total of 4 imitator froglets before I realized what was happening.

Now that I have a frogroom that is detached from my house, I may let go some house geckos in there to keep the ff and spider population under control.


----------



## Scott

Ha... so what are you going to use to control the house gecko population?!?

s :wink: 


rompida said:


> ... Now that I have a frogroom that is detached from my house, I may let go some house geckos in there to keep the ff and spider population under control.


----------



## kyle1745

*Ohio Spider*

Well these spiders are not small we had a ton of these in our basement the first year we lived in our house. You can tell from the gap in the block about how big it is. Not small thats for sure...


----------



## melissa68

*Re: Ohio Spider*

OMG Kyle, I thought you were exagerating. That thing is huge.

Somehow I think that one is capable of carrying small mammals!

Melis



kyle1745 said:


> Well these spiders are not small we had a ton of these in our basement the first year we lived in our house. You can tell from the gap in the block about how big it is. Not small thats for sure...


----------



## Mantellaprince20

*Spiders!!!!*

Hmm, that really does present a problem for a frog room, unless of course your frogs are all big enough. Maybe, if your frog room is humid enough, and secure, you can release some large tree frogs such as a few whites, or something. Tokay gecko is a good idea, they will eat anything that wiggles. ALso, I would suggest your tanks are very secure, use a fine screen to cover up anything that a spider might be able to get in through. I have seen many a wolf spider that could take out a small frog such as my crocea froglets or my m. aurantiaca's. That would really tick me off though. Fortunately, I don't have a frog room yet, and my room has never had a spider crawl in. Anyway, good luck all of you spider hunters. Even an anole is a good idea if your room is secure. Other than that, how can you effectively control spiders??? GOod luck all,

Ed


----------



## Guest

*Re: Scary*



trinacliff said:


> ...now, what is the general consensus about the best way to remove the spiders? Shopvac? Will this kill the babies too?


a shopvac wont inherently kill the spiders, just suck them up into the barrel. you have to deal with the killing part yourself. personally i dont mind spiders as long as they arent inside so i just dump the barrel in the woods by my house. they do play a important role in nature (like killing mosquitos) just not so much of a role in the house. I suppose if you lived in the city or a place where you couldn't "transplant" them, just empty the shopvac into a plastic trashbag and chuck it into the bin.


----------



## trinacliff

*Thanks*

Thanks for the input...I guess that would be the best way to ensure you get the babies too. Generally, I don't mind spiders much either, but we have black widows here...now they scare me. We also have the huge banana spiders that have a web so tough that even I get tangled up in them sometimes...hahaha! I leave most of them alone if they are outside...but the black widows have to go as soon as I see them. I need to figure out what kind are in the cham/frog room.

Kristen


----------



## Guest

The midwest spider population HAS boomed this year, and I suppose it's because the insect population has also increased drastically with all of the rain we've had. Spiders are like snakes in the basement-they only show up where there's food.


----------



## bbrock

*Re: Ohio Spider*



kyle1745 said:


> Well these spiders are not small we had a ton of these in our basement the first year we lived in our house. You can tell from the gap in the block about how big it is. Not small thats for sure...


Looks like a nice wolf spider there. Let's put some things in perspective though. How many of us have cats running around our houses and frog rooms? And what do we do to protect our frogs from the cats? My point is that a large wolf spider inside a vivarium with frogs is a problem. I had one come in with some meadow plankton that was inside an auratus tank and was huge. Luckily I was able to catch it before it devoured any frogs. However, the same wolf spider running around in the frog room is not much of an issue (for the frogs anyway). provided the vivaria are properly constructed and secure, a large wolf spider in the frog room should pose no greater danger to the frogs than a cat.

Probably the most likely way that large spiders can get into a vivarium is by coming in with meadow plankton when small and surviving to reach a larger size. In this case, keeping the frog room 100% spider free isn't going to change the threat level to the frogs since we are the culprits introducing the spiders.


----------



## Guest

Bah! down with the spiders!!! I had a huge black widow crawling on my hand about a week ago when i was working on my truck. I havn't seen any wolf spider yet. My basement has been pretty bug free for some weird reason only insects i have seen in there this year are the flies and saw a jumping spider awhile back.


----------



## Dancing frogs

:twisted: 
bumping this one up for Halloween!
:twisted:


----------



## devin mac

Lydia said:


> The midwest spider population HAS boomed this year, and I suppose it's because the insect population has also increased drastically with all of the rain we've had. Spiders are like snakes in the basement-they only show up where there's food.


well, this was also the year of the brood x emergence, so i guarantee that has a lot to do with it. betcha it happened 17 years ago, too ;-)


----------

