Cost of keeping T's?

[antinous]

As I'm getting closer to getting an apartment next year (opposed to the dorms right now) I'm beginning to look into more sheets and threads about T's. One thing I haven't been able to see is the cost of maintenance (feeding, housing, heating, etc.) of them. Approximately how much is it to keep about 10 T's?
And how many T's can you keep (maintenance, food, etc.) vs. the cost of keeping a dog?

Thanks!

 

[Hobo]

Setup can be under $10 if you don't want to do anything too fancy (plastic shoebox, peat, dollar store ramekin water dish, and flower pot/pipe hide).

Average monthly cost for a tarantula is however many crickets/feeders you feed it. Let's say you feed it once a week, a typical feeding schedule. Monthly cost would be whatever 4-5 feeders will cost you. Probably well under a dollar.
Multiply that by however many tarantulas you have. Note that they will fast for weeks/months sometimes.

With how much time and money you would spend on a dog, you could probably keep all of the tarantulas.

 

[pyro fiend]

e3dit: pff hobo beat me and with a better answer...

well i dont have this many T's bu ti can imagine because i keep a leopard gecko as well as over 9 snakes... and as far as food cost go.. its varries on your schedule

but now if i was to say give an example on my leo.. shell eat 2-3 male dubias a week if i let her and some mealies.. that boils down to 1-3 dollars if i wasnt breeding my own.id be spending more money.
just like my snakes. my 40 rats keep me overstocked on food. if i wasnt buying a 8lb bag of food every 2 weeks or so [5bucks] id be spending over 50 bucks a week.

also depends on who you buy from. i almost bought 50 b.lats from a local dealer for some T's and he was trying to charge me $15 plus i had to drive out of town to get them. another only sold them by the 1000 was bout 80 bucks from him... but i found another that sold me them for $2.50 but if i had my own.. pennies a day probably.

as far as electric it all depends on where you live and what your temps are like. i myself heat my entire room because i have no instalation in my room. but i could use all heat tape or heat lamps, which the tape would cost less to run but probably alot more upfront. and id be cold myself :3


it just depends on everything. i thnk my snakes are 10x less time consuming on feeding and cleaning then my fish. and my tanks are so stable i only need 1 water change a month XD
im picky i guess

 

[cold blood]

you could spend more on a single bone for a dog than you will likely spend on a t in a month! The set up is the only real expense aside from the t of course, once you have that, feeders are literally the cheapest thing most pet stores sell.

Dog vs. t....no comparison, not even a small one (comparison or dog...lol)

 

[Poec54]

They don't cost much to hkeep, in dollars or time, , which is why you so many people worldwide with good-sized collections. You can also keep them for free, and even get new ones for free, if you breed an occasional female. Sell the slings and it'll pay for your caging and shelves, and pay for crickets for a long time. Ot trade the slings for new spiders.

 

[just1moreT]

Once you have a established colony of what ever feeder your going to use you pretty much have free food ,still need to feed your feeders good though and that will cost some but not much and the reward will be seen in your T's, they also do well with room temp if your comfortable they are to T'S are cleanest well oboreals is matter of opinion , and cheap to keep and less demanding as pets and my new E sp red lets me hold her do that with a goldie

 

[antinous]

Thanks for the response guys! I've given my friends who I'm rooming with a heads up about me keeping T's, they're actually surprised I'm not keeping many other animals seeing I'm a zoology major haha.

Also, since I've never owned a dog, approximately how many T's would compare yearly with the cost of one dog? Thanks!

 

[SpiritScale]

Heating---nothing on top of what you'd pay to maintain normal (ie. 72-75 degrees) room temperature for yourself.
Housing---as cheap (deli cup/shoebox/plastic container, simple flowerpot hide, small ramekin etc water dish and in my case cocofibre substrate) or as complicated and fancy (acrylic housing, lighting, live plants/extensive fake decor etc) as you want it to be. $10 and under for a simple set up.
Feeding---currently my 14 T's and 2 scorplings are complete freebies because I have a young growing beardie so always have feeders in the house. If you can raise your own, then nothing beyond initial set-up and whatever substrate and food you feed them.
If I were buying crickets etc to feed my T's...maybe $5 dollars a month? Maybe?

Yearly cost of the same amount of tarantulas as a dog? Well assuming your dog costs you at a very cheap minimum $1200 a year, though yes probably with vet bills, tick/flea meds it'd be much more. But for simplicity's sake let's assume you spend $100 monthly on the dog (if you added up yearly expenses and divided them over 12 months).
I can feed 250 tarantulas for $35 a month (that's 1000 crickets once a month)....so if my budget is about $100 dollars a month....
One dog = 750 tarantulas +/- lol.

And that's if I'm not raising my own feeders XD

 

[Hobo]

How many Ts to a dog. That's a funny question!

Google says average expense of dogs can cost anything from 2 - 3 thousand a year, minus emergencies, etc.

So going by that, you can buy ~$3000 worth of feeders (all other expenses solely for the tarantulas will be negligible, assuming you go the cheapest route). Online, I can get 1000 crickets for about $25. So $3000 will let you purchase roughly 120,000 crickets per year.
That means you can feed about about 2,307 tarantulas one cricket every week with how much you'd spend on a dog. Don't forget you will often get an over count when ordering large quantities!

And this is assuming you are buying feeders. If you raise roaches to feed your hoard for example, (which anyone in the right mind with 2000+ spiders to feed will do), cost of feeders will drop to such an extent that the amount of spiders you can keep will no longer be limited by cost, but instead the amount of time/space you have to physically care for them all.

So when I said "all of the tarantulas", I was just only slightly exaggerating.

 

[viper69]

If you can't afford a T get a goldfish. That's the only exotic I can think of that is cheaper from my experience

 

[antinous]

Heating---nothing on top of what you'd pay to maintain normal (ie. 72-75 degrees) room temperature for yourself.
Housing---as cheap (deli cup/shoebox/plastic container, simple flowerpot hide, small ramekin etc water dish and in my case cocofibre substrate) or as complicated and fancy (acrylic housing, lighting, live plants/extensive fake decor etc) as you want it to be. $10 and under for a simple set up.
Feeding---currently my 14 T's and 2 scorplings are complete freebies because I have a young growing beardie so always have feeders in the house. If you can raise your own, then nothing beyond initial set-up and whatever substrate and food you feed them.
If I were buying crickets etc to feed my T's...maybe $5 dollars a month? Maybe?

Yearly cost of the same amount of tarantulas as a dog? Well assuming your dog costs you at a very cheap minimum $1200 a year, though yes probably with vet bills, tick/flea meds it'd be much more. But for simplicity's sake let's assume you spend $100 monthly on the dog (if you added up yearly expenses and divided them over 12 months).
I can feed 250 tarantulas for $35 a month (that's 1000 crickets once a month)....so if my budget is about $100 dollars a month....
One dog = 750 tarantulas +/- lol.

And that's if I'm not raising my own feeders XD

Thanks for the information!

How many Ts to a dog. That's a funny question!

Google says average expense of dogs can cost anything from 2 - 3 thousand a year, minus emergencies, etc.

So going by that, you can buy ~$3000 worth of feeders (all other expenses solely for the tarantulas will be negligible, assuming you go the cheapest route). Online, I can get 1000 crickets for about $25. So $3000 will let you purchase roughly 120,000 crickets per year.
That means you can feed about about 2,307 tarantulas one cricket every week with how much you'd spend on a dog. Don't forget you will often get an over count when ordering large quantities!

And this is assuming you are buying feeders. If you raise roaches to feed your hoard for example, (which anyone in the right mind with 2000+ spiders to feed will do), cost of feeders will drop to such an extent that the amount of spiders you can keep will no longer be limited by cost, but instead the amount of time/space you have to physically care for them all.

So when I said "all of the tarantulas", I was just only slightly exaggerating.

Woah, that's a lot! Haha Thanks!

If you can't afford a T get a goldfish. That's the only exotic I can think of that is cheaper from my experience

It's not that I can't afford one, I was just curious to see how much it would cost haha.

 

[Mike41793]

Tarantulas are incredibly cheap to keep. One HUGE plus right off the bat is that no special heat or lights are required. Also they have no smell, take up minimal space, and make no noise (except for maybe some drumming eventually haha) so they're ideal for apartment living with housemates.

Feeding- Once a week is what I feed (and plenty of others) but some people feed as little as once a month. Its really up to your schedule. Cost of feeders is really cheap and you have a lot of options. You could go to the petstore every week and get crickets or worms. Or you could Get a Small 6qt tub and order some roaches online and keep them in there as you feed them off. (dubia roaches are extremely hardy and very easy to take care of). The costs for any of these would probably be under $10 a month to feed 10 T's or even more probably.

Housing- If you go to a deli and ask them for a few of their pasta or potato salad containers they'd probably give them to you for free. If not then you can find something similar at the dollar store. I think that the plastic tubs I got at Walmart for most of my bigger T's were only $4.99 each. They're like 1.5gallons I wanna say. They'll house most of them comfortably for years. Get a block of Coco coir or bag of peat moss to use as substrate. That'd be about $5. Water to give the T's should be free. For hides if you want a natural but more expensive look, get cork bark. If you want to go cheaper get sections of pvc pipe or couplings and cut them to size.
Space- not a lot needed for 10 T's. I'm assuming you wouldn't be starting out with 10 mature adults though haha. Even 10 adults could be kept comfortably in a Small apartment bedroom.

The actually Tarantulas themselves can vary a lot in price depending on size and species. There are a ton of great beginner species you could get for under $25, even more for under $50. Etc. Just all depends on your budget. I would start out small and maybe get one or two (maybe a third since a lot of people throw in freebies) and raise them for a couple months, then go from there. No need to rush, just enjoy them and get comfortable with them! I can't wait to see what you end up getting haha!


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[MarkmD]

Yeah T's are very cheap, That does depend on your budget for the T's themselves, Setup wise they are cheap you can go to most stores and get Tupperware containers of various sizes or KK's from the pet-shop etc.

 

[Lrntolive]

Or if you're like me, you consider them to be works of art by nature and build custom enclosures for them. I personally feel they need enclosures worthy of their beauty. But I tend to go to extremes with my hobbies.

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[Tongue Flicker]

This would also be a case to case basis depending on location. Of course a tropical T keeper living in a year-round cold country will need stuff for supplemental heating as well as for stuff to maintain his feeders alive if he farms them. But regardless of country, expenses mainly lie in buying feeders, the more mouths to feed the higher the cost. A single T would normally cost less than a dollar to maintain monthly.

 

[Angler]

I had a 260 and 125 gallon fish tank in my house. Food, lighting, heating, weekly water changes, cleaning the filters. What a pain! And more expensive than tarantulas. Now I'm in a little apartment and no more fish. Now I'm gonna keep just Ts. I'm excited about the change in hobby. Its gonna be a lot less costly and a lot less maintenance. And Ts are awsome

 

[Hanska]

If you can't afford a T get a goldfish. That's the only exotic I can think of that is cheaper from my experience

NO! Goldfish are social and should never be kept alone. They are also long lived and grow very large and need a minimum 300L(80g I think) tank.
Keeping one in a bowl is torture.

 

[vespers]

Keeping one in a bowl is torture.

Unless I missed it, no one mentioned anything about keeping a goldfish in a bowl.

 

[Wildenthusiast]

Unless I missed it, no one mentioned anything about keeping a goldfish in a bowl.

I thought I may have missed this comment as well. Lol

 

[Tongue Flicker]

I thought I may have missed this comment as well. Lol

Unless I missed it, no one mentioned anything about keeping a goldfish in a bowl.

Lol i thought i was just drunk