T.blondi diet? (sling)

I've fed my 2" t.blondi sling 3 wax worms since its molt, i've offered it crickets but it refused them, but it did take the wax worms.

so since i'm going to/am power feeding it, what would you recomened i feed it?
also is their a gut loader i can give to wax worms and crickets?

simply put i'm trying to get my little T as big as possible, though i don't want to do anything that could be harmful, i know that power feeding leaves t's vunerable to falling and injuring themselves, so i'll be making sure to minimize that risk.

any other tips are welcome

ghost_tomb said:

I've fed my 2" t.blondi sling 3 wax worms since its molt, i've offered it crickets but it refused them, but it did take the wax worms.

so since i'm going to/am power feeding it, what would you recomened i feed it?
also is their a gut loader i can give to wax worms and crickets?

simply put i'm trying to get my little T as big as possible, though i don't want to do anything that could be harmful, i know that power feeding leaves t's vunerable to falling and injuring themselves, so i'll be making sure to minimize that risk.

any other tips are welcome

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If you have a T. blondi , it will be big before you know it. Very big, in fact.

Why do want to power-feed it?

Can you power-feed a S'ling? (Or any spider for that matter?)

I've noticed with mine that they will eat if they are hungry and if they are not no amount of coaxing or prey changes will get them to. :?

Salmissra said:

Can you power-feed a S'ling? (Or any spider for that matter?)

I've noticed with mine that they will eat if they are hungry and if they are not no amount of coaxing or prey changes will get them to. :?

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I've heard many times that the more you feed a T, the faster they grow. The logic is that the increased feedings increase the T's metabolism, causing it to grow faster. This also presumably decreases the T's life expectancy. I'm not sure how much scientific research has gone into this, so please don't take this as absolute fact.

beccamillott said:

If you have a T. blondi , it will be big before you know it. Very big, in fact.

Why do want to power-feed it?

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because i want to have a massive tarantula in a tank (why else do you have a T.blondi?)

i belive powerfeeding is when you feed a t as much as it will eat, where as some people feed their T's every 3-5 days.

My lone blondi that I used to have would power feed itself, LOL. You can powerfeed them with just about anything, I USED to prefer crickets though as they are the best bet nutritionally IMO. I feed mine (spiders, don't have a Goliath anymore) mealworms now as they are much easier to raise and I was already raising them to feed Leopard Geckos. IME they are very good eaters and will often take more than one prey item at a time.

I have a T blondi sling and it eats very well. It hasn't molted yet since I've had it but it eats like a king. I offer it a pre-killed cricket about once or twice a week and it will eat as much as possible. It's getting lighter in color esp. on its abdomen, so I'm expecting a molt sometime within the next few weeks!

I’m looking at feeding my blondi pinkies (the pre killed kind) and wax worms, since that should give it all it needs, my concern is will this provide it with enough (I forget the name) shell material to grow?

Question first...how long has it been since your blondi molted?

Now, since it is only 2 inches...slow down pal or you could end up doing more harm to your T than good.
As far as what to feed, don't even think about pinkies until it's big enough to eat one, pre-killed or not, that's just unwise and a waste of money. If you want good, nutritious food for your blondi that will give it maximum nutrition start off by feeding it something other than wax worms. You are going for the high fat no nutrition diet here and that's not going to benefit your T. Feed it meal worms, roaches, crix, things that have more nutritional value to them. As far as "gut loading" your feeders, you can do that by simply making a food out of bran, oats and powered milk or baby cereal and feeding it to your feeder the day before you feed them to your T. Gut loading is just that, it loads the feeder's "gut" with all the good stuff that we want our Ts to ingest, so, in order for them to have the chance to ingest it, you have to offer the feeders before they poop it out. You can get gut loaders in the stores or on line as well.
Do remember one thing, a fat tarantula is just that, FAT, and fat does not mean healthy. If I power fed you, you'd be fat and ugly and very unhealthy and would most likely die a lot sooner than if you had proper nutrition, a proper diet and some sort of restraint on food. Plus, I wouldn't be quite as proud if you were fat and ugly as I would if you were a lean, mean T machine!

Important thing to remember is “rubbish in rubbish out” any live food is better when its fed a good diet, I used to breed Waxworm to back up my crix use when I had a large collection the only problem is a good mix for rearing them (you can find many online nowdays) does cost a bit to make up but that’s true of most live foods (except for roachs which will eat table scraps)

Shop/breeder bought live foods are often only fed a diet that keeps them going (mealworms are the worst for this) like metzgerzoo has said you can feed up bought live food before you use it and if you have just a few animals to feed the costs of providing good food will balance out (as your not spending a lot on buying the food animals in the first place) with lot of mouths to feed just going the whole hogg and breeding and feeding well from the start beings to look better.

metzgerzoo said:

Question first...how long has it been since your blondi molted?

Now, since it is only 2 inches...slow down pal or you could end up doing more harm to your T than good.
As far as what to feed, don't even think about pinkies until it's big enough to eat one, pre-killed or not, that's just unwise and a waste of money. If you want good, nutritious food for your blondi that will give it maximum nutrition start off by feeding it something other than wax worms. You are going for the high fat no nutrition diet here and that's not going to benefit your T. Feed it meal worms, roaches, crix, things that have more nutritional value to them. As far as "gut loading" your feeders, you can do that by simply making a food out of bran, oats and powered milk or baby cereal and feeding it to your feeder the day before you feed them to your T. Gut loading is just that, it loads the feeder's "gut" with all the good stuff that we want our Ts to ingest, so, in order for them to have the chance to ingest it, you have to offer the feeders before they poop it out. You can get gut loaders in the stores or on line as well.
Do remember one thing, a fat tarantula is just that, FAT, and fat does not mean healthy. If I power fed you, you'd be fat and ugly and very unhealthy and would most likely die a lot sooner than if you had proper nutrition, a proper diet and some sort of restraint on food. Plus, I wouldn't be quite as proud if you were fat and ugly as I would if you were a lean, mean T machine!

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I think you are making a lot of assumptions about tarantula physiology that just arent true. A 'fat' spider isn't fat in the same way as a humans, or indeed any vertebrate will experience. In most vertebrates, fatness is due to an excess of subcutaneous lipids building up. Tarantulas don't store any subcutaneous fat, all the food is stored in a balloon type structure in the stomach called the midgut caeca. The belief that waxworms somehow consist of a bad diet is a spillover from the reptile keeping hobby, where it is true that they can be a cause of obesity in reptiles. There is no evidence that waxworms will cause excessive 'fatness' in tarantulas, no more that a cricket, mealworm or mouse of a similar weight. The other piece of false evidence that is commonly rolled out in tarantulas forums that mealworms are not a good food source because of the high chitin levels is also a spillover from the reptile hobby, excessive chitin is not going to cause gut impaction in tarantulas, because most of it would be filtered out at the ingestion stage.

Giving his tarantula an excess of food is not going to cause problems, spiders know when to stop eating, and although it may look like they are going to burst, they will not. As long as he makes sure that there isnt the possibility of the spider falling and rupturing its abdomen, he can feed his blondi as much as he wants.

Cheers,

thanks danread & metzgerzoo.

This is why i made this thread, to find out what to do and how it should be done.

So Danread, if i fed my blondi just wax worms (i have no intention of doing that mind) would it have any trouble forming chitin (thought i thought that t's didn't use this?) for its new skin during pre-molt?

And why would there be a problem feeding it pinkies? Considering all the minerals etc that they contain I fail to see how they could harm the spider? Especially considering how they filter their food.

If you guys could tell me what you'd recommend feeding it and WHY, it would be appreciated, since I want to know why it’s good to feed it this and not that etc.

many thanks to those who have posted :clap:

I'm not 100% sure, but i would guess that chitin in the diet it not necessary for the production of chitin in tarantulas. Mainly because non-predatory insects have chitin in their cuticles, so it must be possible to generate it without having it as a source in the diet.

I think your best bet is to try and give your spider a diverse diet as possible. It is quite possible to raise a tarantula on a diet of one organism alone, many have only had chrickets all their life and grown and reproduced just fine, but a diverse diet it likely to be better in terms of optimum growth. A member of the research group i am working in has got a paper being submitted that shows that a diverse diet in Carabid beetles had a significant effect on the production of eggs, with the beetles subjested to the most diverse diet producing significantly more eggs. There is no guarantee that this would apply to tarantulas, but it seems likely. So if i was you, try to include crickets, locusts, roaches, mealworms, waxworms and mice! If you want to just choose one good feeder, i can't recommend roaches highly enough.

Cheers,

great stuff, thanks for the info.

sadly you can't get roachs cheaply in britian, £2.50 for ONE hisser

but i've managed to build up a group of nine that i've been trying to breed, got a female who should have popped AGES ago, so i'm hoping for loads of babies from her, but still ages away from having enough roachs to use them as feeders

so i'll feed it wax worms, black crickets, brown crickets, pinkies (i hate meal worms). hoppers and locusts are way to big/strong for it at current i think, but give it 40 days and i can't see it having trouble

when a t's been powerfeed how much more does it grow per molt?
I know a blondi is massive before you know it, but still if anyone can give me a rough idea of the growth difference it would be great

ps what do wax worms turn into??? since i've got 10 pupa on my hands, could these be another good food source? how long for them to hatch?

thanks all :worship:

Well, my two blondi are not slings, one is 7 inches the other is 8, but, as far as what I feed all of my Ts in general and why, here goes:

Slings smaller than 1 inch get baby mealworms and crickets because, IMO, it gives them a good wide range of substance in their diets and I like to offer them a variety.

Larger slings and subs get larger mealworms, crickets and roaches because...see above

Adults get crickets, roaches and pinkies or other vertebrate prey. I don't even bother with worms for my bigguns as I feel it's a waste of time to offer such a small tease as a "meal", plus, most of my adults won't eat worms anyway.

I prefer to feed all of my inverts different prey items rather than just one thing all the time. Whether or not it makes a difference, who knows, but it suits me to give them a variety, seeing as how that's what they would get in the wild.

@danread, I was not assuming anything by my earlier post, I was simply making a figurative comparison as I am very well aware that Tarantulas do not share the same physiology as vertebrates. Nor was it meant to suggest that feeding waxworms is "bad" in any way for a T, I feed them to mine afterall. As far as the carry overs from the reptile world...that I would know very little about as I do not keep reptiles. To clarify, all I meant by my comment was to not feed only waxworms as they are very "rich" and seeing as how tarantulas do not "burn fat" like most vertebrates do, the heavier they get the more difficult mobility can be until they shed some of it in a molt.

Hi Ghost tomb,

I definitely wouldn't use hissers as feeders, not because they don;t make good food, but because they breed far to slowly. It would take you a couple of years to build a group of nine into a good sized self sustaining feedier colony. Instead, go for one of the fast breeding roach species, if you don't mind climbing species, lobster roaches (Nauphoeta cinerea) are excellent, nice and meaty and breed fast. Or if you want non-climbing roaches, go for Blaptica dubia, Blaberus discoidalis or Eublaberus posticus. The non-climbers are probably a bit better in terms of minimising escapes, but they do take a longer time to breed. One the other hand, if you are patient, once the colony has got to a certian critical mass, you will have more roaches than you ever need. Between the roach species i have, and the mealworms i breed, i never need to buy any crickets at all (although i do occasionally as my collared lizards like them). If you want some, have a look at www.bugsdirectuk.com or try one of the UK classifieds. PM me and i can give you the e-mail address of someone selling a few species as well.

Hi metzgerzoo,

I'm not having a go at you, just trying to point out what isnt true. The fact that you are calling mealworms 'rich' is a carryover from the reptile hobby, whether you are aware of it or not. Feeding tarantulas prey that is high in fat such as waxworms is not going to make any difference to the fatness of a tarantula. They don't store fat, so a fatty prey item will make them no fatter than a non fatty item. Food is liquified, stored in the midgut caeca and then anything that is not absorbed and used is then excreted. The fatness of a tarantula is due to the amount of food stored, NOT due to the quantity of fat.

Cheers,

i've sent the people at bugsdirect an e-mail asking how many Nauphoeta cinerea come with the breeding culture, i'm looking at ordering 3, which hopefully we allow me to set up a colony very quickly.

my hissers should of had about 40 babies by now, based on 40 day incubation period damn things.

ghost_tomb said:

i've sent the people at bugsdirect an e-mail asking how many Nauphoeta cinerea come with the breeding culture, i'm looking at ordering 3, which hopefully we allow me to set up a colony very quickly.

my hissers should of had about 40 babies by now, based on 40 day incubation period damn things.

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I believe hissers like it quite warm and humid, but I'm not real sure on that as I don't raise that particular species. You might try making their enviroment warmer and more humid, mayb that will help with procreation.

i have been keeping them humid and warm at 86*f which just makes the fact that i've got no babies more anoying.

ghost_tomb said:

If you guys could tell me what you'd recommend feeding it and WHY, it would be appreciated, since I want to know why it’s good to feed it this and not that etc.

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I've seen all the posts on what to feed them and why, and for the most part it comes down to personal preference. Some people swear by crickets, others roaches and yet others pinkies etc.etc. So I won't go down that same path.

T.blondis will get large if they're given an adequate amount of any prey item, so it you're interested in having it grow larger, faster...you might want to do some searches on temperatures. Higher temperatures should lead to a faster metabolic rate...which in turn leads to a shorter life span. You could end up shortening your T's life considerably, in exchange for a faster growth. I guess that's something you'll have to decide.
Although I can't understand why you want it to grow up so quick. If all you wanted was a giant blondi, you should've bought an adult. Most of the fun in having slings is taking care of them and watching them grow.