Appropriate tank/terrarium/enclosure sizes?

[pyro fiend]

i wasnt trying to come by as rude myself either just trying to prove a point sence as stated you said it was immoral. and its better to keep them where they can roam.. i myself have had a wild caught ball/royal python female starve herself because i refused to put her in a small enough container. she was stressed. i tried large 4x8 natural enclosure with over 1ft of dirt and a hiding hole tree branches log etc.... tried 40g 41qt 28qt.. she just wanted to be left alone [id only bug her every 2 weeks to try and feed her] and in some hole that held her almost tight as can be.. the only time i got her to eat was after being in a 15qt long container for 3 weeks and ate a normal rat.. i felt so bad because she was 3ft or so and barely had room to move... soon after i put her into a 28qt with hides...

now by keeping her in what is considered normal conditions for other snakes, and not wild caught. i was the reason she wouldnt eat. she was farm fresh and weighed in at 1400 grams. she went about a yr and a half quickly dropping down in weight to ending up at right around 3-400g.. in the end she had perfect temps normal humidity, always drank water.. but because i refused to give her a tiny tub and felt myself that it was too inhumane, she was stressed. and ended up dwindling away..

now as i said at one point we all used to think bigger is better and i used my original possible wild caught as an example because i didnt want sympathy or judgmental statements towards my idiocy this story would stir up...but youd be better off listening to the experts and those who have done much more research and work then going with personal feelings..

now it may not hit home when your dealing with a $20 or $30 spider.. but it realy hit home with me when i open the tub to refill the water dish only to find her covered in little flies.. i was crushed after iv spent $200 on this girl, and just as much money to try and get her to eat. [even brought in african soft furred rats which are illegal in my state to try and get her to eat] to have her die in the end because she was too stressed out to eat because of what I THOUGHT was humane and inhumane....


just listen to the rule of thumb if you realy want your animal to thrive


to whom this may concern, this girl was also vet tested and x-rayed for parasites and internal problems way before she died..and was perfectly fine

 

[Destrabalare]

I mean rude as in for the spider not that people that have them in smaller tanks are rude. :c

 

[pyro fiend]

I mean rude as in for the spider not that people that have them in smaller tanks are rude. :c

uhm.. "Some of you seemed pretty rude and there's really no reason to be rude about it." was your first line..

 

[Destrabalare]

No no no. We were talking about the original post. "OP, perhaps if you'd asked for help as opposed to stating it was immoral, rude and wrong to not keep spiders in large aquariums, you'd have met less resistance. Everyone here is willing to help - but we are all snarky smart alecks too." In the original post what I meant by rude was that it seemed rude to the spider, not that people who do it are rude themselves. Just the situation?

We weren't talking about when I said the responses didn't have to be so rude. I said that because some of them were kind of rude. But it was apparently just sort of a misunderstanding because I used the wrong words.

 

[freedumbdclxvi]

I know what you meant. But when you start by saying that most keep their spiders in an immoral way, you are setting a negative tone.

 

[Destrabalare]

My apologies for using the wrong word. :c

 

[Stan Schultz]

I'm still new-ish to the hobby. Only about a year in. ...

Okay. This is called playing catch-up. Sorry I didn't get to you earlier.

WELCOME TO THE HOBBY!

WELCOME TO THIS FORUM!

[size=+1]BINGO![/size] You just said the magic words!

It sounds a lot like you need to go to the Spiders, Calgary webtree and start reading. At least scan through the entire website, picking out topics that catch your attention. (Even experienced aficionados can sometimes benefit from a little review.)

DO NOT FAIL TO READ STAN'S NEWBIE INTRODUCTION!

DO NOT FAIL TO READ THE FOUR BOOKS RECOMMENDED IN STAN'S RANT!

DO NOT FAIL TO READ THE ENTIRE MYTH WEBTREE!

ESPECIALLY, READ CARE SHEETS: THE MOTHER OF ALL MYTHS.

ESPECIALLY, READ GROWING YOUR OWN.

ESPECIALLY, READ TEMPERATURE.

ESPECIALLY, READ RELATIVE HUMIDITY.

And, I strongly suggest you scan through SUBSTRATE.

The best news is that 90% of the questions you wanted to ask plus a lot, LOT more that you didn't think to ask are all laid out for you for ABSOLUTELY FREE if you read that website and take advantage of your friendly, neighborhood, public library! All you need do is read.

... Things like a Oecilotheria Metallica, Theraphosa Blondi, and Pelinobius Muticus. ...

And now that you're officially a part of this amazing hobby we're going to hold you to a higher standard!

:biggrin:

You got the italics correct (sort of, even though the "and" should not be - You were just being lazy! ), but scientific names are composed of two words. The first letter of the first word is ALWAYS capitalized, even when abbreviated (as in B. smithi). But the second word - the "specific epithet," if you're interested - is never capitalized. (Although zoologists used to capitalize the first letter if it was a proper noun. That practice has now fallen by the wayside.) (Nad, I'm nt gong to berate you for mispselling Poecilotheria because ocneni a wile evn O mispel a words ore too. Thank Heavn for my smell checer!)

... I keep all of my tarantulas in 10 gallon tanks because morally I feel like the size terrariums and tanks etc that people claim are okay are wrong. It's that way with a ton of pets people keep. Like beta fish having "beta bowls" when in reality one beta needs at least a 5 gallon tank. Or how people think it's humane to keep rats in tiny little rat homes or rabbits in little built houses when they actually need huge enclosures. Or even people who keep iguanas in little reptile terrariums when they need almost an entire room to themselves. So naturally I thought, this critter keeper and little plastic bins people claim are okay actually AREN'T okay, and is probably rude.
I heard a lot of people tell me " ____ tarantula is a hider, you're wasting money getting a 10 gallon tank! Mine is in a little cup and never comes out!" well maybe that was because it became depressed over it's surroundings and lack of space? Because I have a burrower who is very active in his 10 gallon tank, and has made tunnels through out the entire thing. He loves rearranging his plants and comes out pretty often to hang out. ...

The Berlin wall has fallen. It's official, it's now a free world. We can think, feel, and believe anything we want. And, Heaven forefend that I should ever try to tamper with your personal thoughts, feelings or beliefs.

But, for the sake of all the rest of the readers I feel moved to make a few statements on this topic. The optimal sizes of tarantulas' cages has been debated hotly and heavily many times on these forums, and no clear consensus has ever been reached. But generally, the maximal size of the floor space is indefinite (note: NOT infinite!). However we must keep it down to practical proportions in our homes. One of my dreams is to live in a house where the living room was a dirt floored tarantula colony, for instance. In effect, I would be living in THEIR cage! On second thought, it's probably a good thing that I moved into a motorhome instead.

There are also some ramifications to keeping tarantulas in too large cages that must be considered as well. In extremely large cages some tarantulas take to pacing endlessly, and we don't know why (restless because they feel lost or exposed?). In excessively large cages the tarantulas' prey often either gets lost or manages to avoid the tarantula until the prey dies of starvation, dehydration or old age. Using excessively large cages consumes your personal resources and living space unnecessarily. Huge cages are often onerous and troublesome to clean or keep clean.

And of course, excessively small cages are also undesirable for all the reasons mentioned by the OP.

So the enthusiast must make some sort of executive judgement about what's too small and what's too large. The "party line" recommendations are arrived at as a workable compromise between the two extremes.

Having said all that, my biggest complaint with 10 gallon aquariums is that they're too tall. The party line recommendations for height are usually quoted as something like this -

For terrestrial tarantulas:
For babies (see Growing You Own for definitions), the clear internal height (CIH) should not exceed 2 or 3 times the DLS.

For spiderlings up to adult size the CIH should should not exceed 1-1/2 times the DLS.

For very old tarantulas, very obese tarantulas, and the giants among tarantulas, the CIH should not exceed the DLS.

For truly arboreal tarantulas (e.g., Avicularia and Poecilotheria), there is no real limit to height because these species have evolved to live more or less safely at altitude.

For the semi-arboreal tarantulas (e.g., Psalmopoeus cambridgei, Tapinauchenius sp., Stromatopelma calceatum, Heteroscodra maculata) there is no "official" recommendation, but I would restrict it to a maximum of 5 or 6 times DLS, and in practice try to keep the CIH to within 3 or 4 DLS.

_____________________________________________________________________

CIH = Clear Inside Height = The maximal, clear, open, inside distance between the top of the substrate and the highest part of the top of the cage. Also defined as the farthest distance that an adventurous tarantula could fall in its cage.

"Tarantulas and base jumping don't mix."
-- David Desoer
_____________________________________________________________________

DLS = Diagonal Leg Span = The linear distance between the tip of one front leg to the tip of the rear leg on the opposite side when the tarantula is in a normal, resting position. Yes, it's very inaccurate. Yes, it's very unfair. But, we're not competing for gold medals or a new car. We're just trying to figure out how big your spider is.

"Mine's bigger than yours is! Neener, neener, neeee-ner!"
_____________________________________________________________________

Getting back to 10 gallon aquariums, they're too tall. One oft suggested solution is filling the aquarium with extra substrate to reduce the CIH to manageable distances, but this uses up a LOT of substrate if there is a need to do it with more than a cage or two. It's a much better plan to do it correctly from the beginning and acquire cages of the correct height as the enthusiast starts to keep tarantulas.

I'm a big fan of plastic shoe boxes (inexpensive, stackable, almost disposable), plastic sweater boxes (also inexpensive, stackable, almost disposable), and the low profile, better looking, stackable, but more expensive Kritter Keeper and Faunarium style cages. (Note that both brands come in two sizes.)

... Anyways, my point is, if I have 10 gallon tanks for smaller species, what do you personally think would be appropriate and nice for larger species like the ones I listed? Would a terrarium larger than a 10 gallon be okay, or would just a 15 tank be suitable do you think? Or do I bring it up a notch and get a 20 gallon? What would you think humanely gives a wild pet a good home? I mean these things weren't naturally meant to be pets, they had huge areas that were their terrariums. It's only fair to give them a nice amount of space to explore and stretch in. ...

The KIND of tarantula is not the issue. There are over 940 different KINDS of tarantulas, and we seriously aren't going to propose using 940+ different kinds or sizes of cages. The important issue is their SIZE. And, the hobby has more or less settled on these basic rules of thumb -

The minimum suggested floor-space dimensions for a tarantula's cage are:

Shortest dimension - No less than 3 times the tarantula's DLS.

Longest dimension - Equal to or larger than the shortest dimension, preferably twice to three times the shortest dimension.

For circular, hexagonal, octagonal cages, the shortest diameter should be no less than 3 times the tarantula's DLS. Larger is preferred.

This is based on the observation that wild tarantulas almost never venture farther from their burrows than perhaps 2 or 3 DLS, and whenever there is any sort of disturbance, they literally dive down the hole! They normally do not go for a "walkabout" to any great extent (probably for security reasons), and apparently don't need to (based on the experiences of literally tens of thousands of enthusiasts keeping literally hundreds of thousands of tarantulas for more than five decades). And, they're easily capable of stretching in cages of those sizes. In short, while all that extra space may make you feel all warm and tickly inside, it makes no difference to the tarantula.

... I live in Louisiana, ...

Interesting place. Been there several of times. And, Dr. Sam Marshall, author of TARANTULAS AND OTHER ARACHNIDS is an Associate Professor at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches.

There are wild tarantulas (putatively, Aphonopelma hentzi, the Texas brown tarantula) in the non-swampy northern and western areas of the state. They're not found east of the Mississippi River, however.

... so keeping humidity in the tanks isn't hard no matter how big the tank. ...

Humidity is almost as much of a red herring as temperature is. This sort of drivel started out a couple of decades ago and is being virused from one misbegotten care sheet to another by people who really don't have a clue. For the most part, ignore your tarantula's relative humidity and temperature.

Read CARE SHEETS: THE MOTHER OF ALL MYTHS.

Read RELATIVE HUMIDITY. (If you don't completely understand the first part, don't give up. Keep reading. It'll get better as you go along.)

Read TEMPERATURE.

... With out misting ...

Read Misty-Eyed Misting.

... I have ways to keep the temp and humidity down for whatever species needs it

This is a completely nonsensical statement if for no other reason than that very nearly all tarantulas have no "needed" temperature or humidity, being completely capable of adjusting to an even wider tolerance range than we can.

Read the webpages. Read the books.


Hope this helps. Best of luck.



Pop quizzes daily, your little 8-legged Yoda will be giving you!

 

[Nicky Davis]

Where did you find those guidelines- linky linky?

I'm still new-ish to the hobby. Only about a year in. So I still only have smaller/starter tarantulas. However by the end of this year I hope to expand my collection to bigger tarantulas or ones that just generally have to have more care taken to them and their habitat. Things like a Oecilotheria Metallica, Theraphosa Blondi, and Pelinobius Muticus.

I keep all of my tarantulas in 10 gallon tanks because morally I feel like the size terrariums and tanks etc that people claim are okay are wrong. It's that way with a ton of pets people keep. Like beta fish having "beta bowls" when in reality one beta needs at least a 5 gallon tank. Or how people think it's humane to keep rats in tiny little rat homes or rabbits in little built houses when they actually need huge enclosures. Or even people who keep iguanas in little reptile terrariums when they need almost an entire room to themselves. So naturally I thought, this critter keeper and little plastic bins people claim are okay actually AREN'T okay, and is probably rude.
I heard a lot of people tell me " ____ tarantula is a hider, you're wasting money getting a 10 gallon tank! Mine is in a little cup and never comes out!" well maybe that was because it became depressed over it's surroundings and lack of space? Because I have a burrower who is very active in his 10 gallon tank, and has made tunnels through out the entire thing. He loves rearranging his plants and comes out pretty often to hang out.

Anyways, my point is, if I have 10 gallon tanks for smaller species, what do you personally think would be appropriate and nice for larger species like the ones I listed? Would a terrarium larger than a 10 gallon be okay, or would just a 15 tank be suitable do you think? Or do I bring it up a notch and get a 20 gallon? What would you think humanely gives a wild pet a good home? I mean these things weren't naturally meant to be pets, they had huge areas that were their terrariums. It's only fair to give them a nice amount of space to explore and stretch in.

I live in Louisiana, so keeping humidity in the tanks isn't hard no matter how big the tank. With out misting and just having their shallow water bowls the humidity usually stays anywhere from 70-80 and the temp never goes under 70 naturally. I have ways to keep the temp and humidity down for whatever species needs it as I have other pets who don't do well in high temps/humidity. They're in a separate room that's kept cooler and each tank/enclosure for whatever animal is kept at what it needs to be.