I managed to lose five babies in just three days. Two of those (#1, #30) had been acting unresponsive. They weren’t molting or underweight – they just weren’t moving. I kept them for several days hoping they’d snap out of it, but on 2/7 I had to called them dead, despite the lack of a death curl.

On 2/8, #29 also became unresponsive. I called it dead a few days later.

Two others (#17, #26) died the day after a misting when they were fine the day before. One was from group A and one was from group B.

I’ve been doing more research on their natural climate. It’s difficult to find, but I went on iNaturalist to see where they’d been found, then looked up the local climates on Wikipedia. Las Cruces, New Mexico didn’t have humidity listed, but Albuquerque did.

If I don’t mist, the relative humidity of the deli cups is around 40% and ranges from 35-50%. While that’s a little lower than what’s listed above, it’s not that far off. So I decided to stop misting and see what that got me. I last misted on 2/8. It is now 2/16 and I haven’t lost a single baby. None have gone unresponsive either. I should note that they spent 2/13-2/16 at my father-in-law’s place down the street while we tented for termites. It’s possible things were slightly different there, but I’m hoping this pattern holds.

The real test will be this week. Babies #5 and #27 have started molting. They appear to be different instars too, so this will be a good test. If they pull through okay I’ll be a lot more confident in not misting.

You can see #27 wiggle in its molt below.

Tomorrow I have a shipment of spiders coming in, including four unrelated Morpheus slings. Really hoping to breed this species so I hope I can get the humidity issue figured out.