Featured tarantula - Hapalopus sp. Columbia

This beautiful girl pictured below is my Hapalopus sp. Columbia, large morph. She is a captive bred tarantula, like all my arachnids, and comes from Tarantula Canada (tarantulacanada.com).  I got her as a 1/4 inch spiderling in April of 2016, so she has done very well, she is probably about an inch in leg span now, and has molted three times since April, and she is likely due for another one soon.  I keep her just at room temperature, which in my room tends to be between 22 Celsius and 24 daytime and 20 or so at night (I don't provide extra heat for any of my tarantulas and they seem to do fine). She likes to web her container fairly extensively, mostly sheets on the ground as you can see in the picture, and doesn't seem interested in burrowing at all, though others have reported a lot of burrowing by this species. I keep a water dish in the form of a coke bottle lid in one corner and over fill it whenever it gets low. I keep her currently in a size small critter keeper. I know people tend to keep spiderlings in vials (pillbottles), but I find my tarantulas do just fine in larger spaces.  When it's time to feed them, if they are having trouble chasing down their prey, I use a small paint brush to usher the prey towards them to make it easier for them to catch.  I don't like the idea of my arachnids having really small habitats, and I find this is a good compromise.