Hi all

Bad news from my side, out of my 4 bandeds 3 died :-(

I have no idea what went wrong or how, but the only one that survived was one of the smallest ones which perplexes me as to what went wrong. In a nutshell about a month ago I noticed they were becoming a bit lethargic and not going after food (usually they go crazy for flightless fruit flies). This was at the same time the proper winter month started rolling in, so I gave them a realtively high (mid 20s) day time temp by adding a spot light on one side of the cage and a night time low of around 15 degrees. The cage soon became dry which is what usually happens in their region and they all huddled around their empty water bowl and stopped roaming at night. I took it that they were hibernating but I thought it odd that they didn't burrow. I checked on them every week or so and they all seemed fine, then on their weekly check I noticed the largest female who is a great feeder and always the most active looked an opaque colour. I immediately moved the bowl and found them all huddled around in the same spot with 3 dead and one bearly alive and these odd little white mites on them. I put the small survivor in a seperate container and misted it and warmed it up and with in a day it was looking plump again.

Although it has not eaten I am hoping for the best, but could any one shed light on to what happened?? This species can survive temps dropping into the negatives and can survive long dry seasons, so what could have killed them off??????

I am obviously upset about this but hopefully this is something that we can all learn from and help each other to get them to breed. I will try get some more this season and continue to work with this species until I get it right.

But please any input here would be much appreciated even criticism welcome.