Do you feel husbandry standards have stagnated/stopped improving?

[jrh3]

also it's very pleasant too to see how everything evolves and interacts, from a blooming plant to the smaller isopod or springtail

As stated above, this is for the pleasure of the keeper, not a requirement to keep a tarantula healthy. For some, they don’t want to have to deal with live plants, ect. Which requires alot more maintenance.

 

[YungRasputin]

As stated above, this is for the pleasure of the keeper, not a requirement to keep a tarantula healthy. For some, they don’t want to have to deal with live plants, ect. Which requires alot more maintenance.

this is exactly what I’m disagreeing with and would say that there is so little that we know about arachnids in general - their intelligence, venom, behavior, everything - that i think it’s a p bold statement to make that replicating natural living conditions doesn’t benefit the specimen at all and is for the sole benefit of the keeper

 

[DomGom TheFather]

Spider in a box.
It's not nature but there's nothing wrong with trying to get it right. Keep learning what spiders are like and you'll probably make a real nice box.

 

[RezonantVoid]

Even more valid points made from both perspectives, all good food for thought. Interestingly enough too, the votes now indicate the majority want to see at least a small amount of change in the general approach to husbandry.

As stated above, this is for the pleasure of the keeper, not a requirement to keep a tarantula healthy. For some, they don’t want to have to deal with live plants, ect. Which requires alot more maintenance.

If I may just briefly touch upon the last point, I've been doing planted setups with mosses and ferns for a bit over 18 months now. I water them approximately once a week or 2 and do not even have LED's setup yet, merely having them in a naturally well lit room as been sufficient for the plants to both grow and maintain their condition. One of my favourite observations with this is that my trapdoors camoflauge their lids with the mosses and plants. They can survive in a crumbly peat setup with no plants, but seeing them do this has made me think what else we might be missing.

Some of my Phlogius for instance, within days of adding them, would pick up thoroughly sun dried gum leaves and carry them around, placing them in different areas of the enclosure and making rather adorable crunching sounds every now and then. Is this behaviour something significant? Who knows. Is it something cool I'd have never witnessed without trying something out? Absolutely

 

[Dorifto]

As stated above, this is for the pleasure of the keeper, not a requirement to keep a tarantula healthy. For some, they don’t want to have to deal with live plants, ect. Which requires alot more maintenance.

If that statement were true, I'd have a nice pet hole like I had before them. And it's just the opposite.

As @YungRasputin stated, whe know nothing about their real needs. We have simply created a method to keep them healthy, if their enclosures were not so important, why they change their behaviour with those things? Because of our lack of knowledge in this matter, I preffer to offer them those stimulus, even the case if they were useless, and it worked wonderfully for me.

Regarding to the maintenace... Another very common misconception, that they need a lot of maintenance. With the right setup, zero maintenance a part from watering the plants and one trim once, once a year... Zero.
In four years zero mold issues, zero dead plants, (I changed the hedera helix), zero bolus removal, zero mite outbreaks, automatic stable humidity levels even if my house drops to 20s, that otherwise it was a real nightmare to keep them partially moist and humid 60-70s.

All of that, simply understanding how things works and interact with each other.

 

[Benson1990]

I like the look of natural enclosures and they can only be beneficial but I'm skeptical that they change the behavior of T's that much, I mean what can tarantulas really do different in naturalistic enclosures compared to something more simple? all T's do different things at different times for whatever reasons, for instance I have an H. gigas and people normally categorize them as a pet hole but mine is far from that, it's also in a simple enough set up.

They're not like reptiles where nowadays it's far more common to see people providing more advanced husbandry, naturalistic enclosures, UVB, over head heating and lighting etc...the differences with reptiles are night and day, we see them bask and climb and explore...I don't no if the same can be said for T's.

 

[Dorifto]

I like the look of natural enclosures and they can only be beneficial but I'm skeptical that they change the behavior of T's that much

As simple as making a good natural setup as close to their habitat conditions, and see it by yourself.

You will never be able to mimic their own habitat, that's for sure, but it will be closer to the habitat where they evolved. And that's when things thrive.

I mean what can tarantulas really do different in naturalistic enclosures compared to something more simple?

A lot of things. Rearranging plants pushing them and webbing them in certain forms, my pulchra does this a lot for her entrance to make it tighter, moving things to camuflage their hides, to see how the T reacts to the misting system as it was raining and starts to drink. Simplifying being more active overall, as the enclosure offers them more pleasant spots, rather than waiting to all the enclosue to reach that pleasant condition.

 

[RezonantVoid]

I like the look of natural enclosures and they can only be beneficial but I'm skeptical that they change the behavior of T's that much, I mean what can tarantulas really do different in naturalistic enclosures compared to something more simple? all T's do different things at different times for whatever reasons, for instance I have an H. gigas and people normally categorize them as a pet hole but mine is far from that, it's also in a simple enough set up.

They're not like reptiles where nowadays it's far more common to see people providing more advanced husbandry, naturalistic enclosures, UVB, over head heating and lighting etc...the differences with reptiles are night and day, we see them bask and climb and explore...I don't no if the same can be said for T's.

I think an interesting perspective to this is, perhaps we aren't seeing significant changes because we aren't providing the opportunities or stimulus for them to do so. In my very first paragraph, I listed a number of observable behavioral differences I've consistently seen over 18 months. Very true, they are not massive differences, but they are ones that seem to indicate a degree of higher satisfaction. From a practical perspective, an established soil culture/bioactive with an arsenal of microorganisms almost completely eliminates any need for maintenance as well, and rehousings are a thing of the past

 

[DomGom TheFather]

I'm not into the "natural" thing.
We're already so far from natural, what's the real difference? Butt... There's something nice about it. I've kept spiders on basically sterilized peat for years. It acquires it's own composition. Cool, right? No mites. No mold. Healthy spiders. Go all the way. Go as far as the spiders. Just make it a point not to rule anything out in the search for the ultimate. We often overthink things to the detriment of our purpose.

 

[jrh3]

If that statement were true, I'd have a nice pet hole like I had before them. And it's just the opposite.

As @YungRasputin stated, whe know nothing about their real needs. We have simply created a method to keep them healthy, if their enclosures were not so important, why they change their behaviour with those things? Because of our lack of knowledge in this matter, I preffer to offer them those stimulus, even the case if they were useless, and it worked wonderfully for me.

Regarding to the maintenace... Another very common misconception, that they need a lot of maintenance. With the right setup, zero maintenance a part from watering the plants and one trim once, once a year... Zero.
In four years zero mold issues, zero dead plants, (I changed the hedera helix), zero bolus removal, zero mite outbreaks, automatic stable humidity levels even if my house drops to 20s, that otherwise it was a real nightmare to keep them partially moist and humid 60-70s.

All of that, simply understanding how things works and interact with each other.

Your tanks are interesting from what I have seen, pretty amazing, I really enjoy them.

So are you creating natural setups according to the location where each tarantula is local to? Would be interesting to see some of your dry desert species if you are keeping any of those? For arboreal species that are in trees, replication of constant air flow I guess?

 

[Dorifto]

Your tanks are interesting from what I have seen, pretty amazing, I really enjoy them.

So are you creating natural setups according to the location where each tarantula is local to? Would be interesting to see some of your dry desert species if you are keeping any of those? For arboreal species that are in trees, replication of constant air flow I guess?

You will need to wait for them!! Right now I'm only keeping those two. Next house will have his own faunarium hahahahaha.

There is no easier setup than a desert T. A nice blend of soil, some woods and dry grass and leaves. Zero cost, all usually easily available nearby.

Arboreals, that's another story. In this case I'd mimic the grooves, holes etc where they live and use some branches and leaves around that groove to incentive making a nice webbing/hammoc/entrance around there, not the common fully webbed top. The plant should be hard enough to withstand the web and should take the nutrients and moisture from down low (substrate) to prevent dying prematurely. I wouldn't use any very moisture dependant plant or mosses, much easier to keep and the humidity stays at acceptable levels.

 

[viper69]

I will tell you all what’s gone down hill

the god damn owners with damn laziness for looking up information- NO DAMN EXCUSE for NOT taking an interest in an animal in your care

 

[YungRasputin]

y’all: “spiders just need dirt, only dirt, nothing else, they never move”

T: *fills water dish with substrate, moves things around enclosure, throws up dirt curtains, leaves half eaten cricket on log as decor*

I will tell you all what’s gone down hill

the god damn owners with damn laziness for looking up information- NO DAMN EXCUSE for NOT taking an interest in an animal in your care

this but apply it to everything - when did research and doing stuff in the tank stop being fun and interesting and why did this take place

 

[AphonopelmaTX]

this is exactly what I’m disagreeing with and would say that there is so little that we know about arachnids in general - their intelligence, venom, behavior, everything - that i think it’s a p bold statement to make that replicating natural living conditions doesn’t benefit the specimen at all and is for the sole benefit of the keeper

There is quite a bit known about tarantulas in regard to the listed attributes. One just has to go look for it since it is locked away in academic journals, some of which are behind paywalls. For captive care, there is even more known about what works and what doesn't written in books and hobby journals such as in the journal of the British Tarantula Society. When one uses just one or two sources for information, such as internet groups and/ or YouTube, it would appear not much is known, but there is decades of experience and trial and error published on good old fashioned paper.

I'm not certain that when people speak of a creating an enclosure that replicates nature, or some aspect of it, that they are understanding the nature of the tarantula itself in order to accurately judge whether a more naturalistic set up is more or less beneficial than a plain "box of dirt" setup. Without knowing how a tarantula lives in nature, either by reading about it or studying it first hand, there is no basis to compare the success of captive care. Most of the time, I get the feeling that people who build elaborate naturalistic enclosures with plants, lights, a living soil with isopods or springtails, etc. are only guessing at it. If the goal of caring for tarantulas in captivity is to get them to live as they do in nature, then there is a good chance that outcome would be undesirable for the keeper.

In general, tarantulas are sedentary secretive creatures and I'm not sure most understand what that means exactly. The natural behavior of any tarantula is to stay out of sight and motionless unless hunting or carrying out another behavior to achieve physiological homeostasis. If one has a Grammostola rosea or Lasiodora parahybana, as examples, that stay out in the open, moves dirt around all day, and so on, then the objective of replicating their behavior as it would be seen in nature has failed. Tarantulas such as G. rosea and L. parahybana in nature are fossorial tarantulas that live in deep burrows in their respective ecosystems. If they are not acting the same in captivity as a tarantula the hobby calls "fossorial" or "obligate burrowers" in captivity then they are not acting as they would in nature. Therefore a so-called naturalistic enclosure that is meant to replicate nature achieves the exact same thing as a plain box of dirt setup.

What newcomers to the tarantula game don't realize is that tarantula care hasn't changed in at least the past 20 years and yet new and old species to the hobby are being successfully reared all the time. It is presented in a new format, but it isn't new. Think that top soil as a substrate is a novel idea? It isn't. Loamy soils were a recommendation for burrowing tarantulas written about long ago. Also think that the problems encountered when keeping an Avicularia species without a lot of ventilation has been recent discovery? Think again.

 

[Edan bandoot]

There is quite a bit known about tarantulas in regard to the listed attributes. One just has to go look for it since it is locked away in academic journals, some of which are behind paywalls. For captive care, there is even more known about what works and what doesn't written in books and hobby journals such as in the journal of the British Tarantula Society. When one uses just one or two sources for information, such as internet groups and/ or YouTube, it would appear not much is known, but there is decades of experience and trial and error published on good old fashioned paper.

I'm not certain that when people speak of a creating an enclosure that replicates nature, or some aspect of it, that they are understanding the nature of the tarantula itself in order to accurately judge whether a more naturalistic set up is more or less beneficial than a plain "box of dirt" setup. Without knowing how a tarantula lives in nature, either by reading about it or studying it first hand, there is no basis to compare the success of captive care. Most of the time, I get the feeling that people who build elaborate naturalistic enclosures with plants, lights, a living soil with isopods or springtails, etc. are only guessing at it. If the goal of caring for tarantulas in captivity is to get them to live as they do in nature, then there is a good chance that outcome would be undesirable for the keeper.

In general, tarantulas are sedentary secretive creatures and I'm not sure most understand what that means exactly. The natural behavior of any tarantula is to stay out of sight and motionless unless hunting or carrying out another behavior to achieve physiological homeostasis. If one has a Grammostola rosea or Lasiodora parahybana, as examples, that stay out in the open, moves dirt around all day, and so on, then the objective of replicating their behavior as it would be seen in nature has failed. Tarantulas such as G. rosea and L. parahybana in nature are fossorial tarantulas that live in deep burrows in their respective ecosystems. If they are not acting the same in captivity as a tarantula the hobby calls "fossorial" or "obligate burrowers" in captivity then they are not acting as they would in nature. Therefore a so-called naturalistic enclosure that is meant to replicate nature achieves the exact same thing as a plain box of dirt setup.

What newcomers to the tarantula game don't realize is that tarantula care hasn't changed in the 20 years that I have been keeping tarantulas. It is presented in a new format, but it isn't new. Think that top soil as a substrate is a novel idea? It isn't. Loamy soils were a recommendation for burrowing tarantulas written about long ago. Also think that the problems encountered when keeping an Avicularia species without a lot of ventilation has been recent discovery? Think again.

this is getting to what i was referring to when i said people care for "terrestrials" wrong.

When people tout how visible and active their spider is, it makes me wonder how they think that they behave in nature.

 

[AphonopelmaTX]

this is getting to what i was referring to when i said people care for "terrestrials" wrong.

When people tout how visible and active their spider is, it makes me wonder how they think that they behave in nature.

Exactly! I like to say "a happy tarantula is an invisible tarantula". In the wild, you won't see a tarantula unless you go looking for them, come across one by accident (right place right time), or just happen to live in an area where they are prolific. There are exceptions, but I think we can all agree that captive care routines shouldn't be built around exceptions.

 

[Ungoliant]

I think what is considered adequate or acceptable really depends on your current experience level, what you are looking to accomplish, and how much time, energy, and resources you have to devote to experimentation.

The current experience-based recommendations for species that have been in the hobby for a while are adequate inasmuch as the spiders kept that way are healthy and don't seem to be distressed, and people are successfully breeding them.

Just speaking about my situation personally:

Right now, I don't have an abundance of free time (I'm practicing law full time and have a commute that is 50-90 minutes each way), and space is definitely at a premium, so my tarantulas are kind of in a holding pattern right now. I enjoy observing them and caring for them, and I am rehousing them as they grow, but I'm not "growing" the collection or making substantial changes to what I do.

That may change in the future when I have more space to spread out. (When everything is stacked up, you have to shuffle everything around, and it makes maintenance take several times as long as it would if you could quickly access each enclosure.)

when I look at how keepers still recommend tarantulas be kept, i can't help but wonder if we should be raising the bar a little.

For beginners, I generally recommend keeping it simple and starting with one of the "tried and true" approaches. It's possible -- even likely -- that there are better setups, but it's also unlikely to be one that results in a dead spider.

When I see nothing but benefits and happy spiders for not a great deal of effort, I find myself wondering why almost nobody else around me is trying out similar things? Sure, a tarantula can live perfectly well in peat moss and/or a hollow cork tube, but why merely let them live when we can let them thrive? What if there's astonishing behaviour that we are missing out on because the way we house things prevents it?

I wouldn't necessarily undersell the effort. After all, you are still physically going out and making field observations, constantly tweaking setups, etc.

Still, if that is something you have the time and inclination to pursue -- and you've already established a good baseline of experience -- that's perfectly fine. I like it when other people do this and share their results, because even if I don't end up trying to replicate what they are doing, I learn something.

That being said, I'm not sure that trying to mimic nature always results in the optimal setup. After all, most spiderlings probably don't survive to adulthood in the wild, whereas most captive tarantulas reared by competent keepers do. An advantage of captivity is that you can manipulate conditions to improve survival and health.

As both a keeper and collector, all the places I went to get spiders showed them in vastly different environments to how I was keeping them. So I started experimenting with various clay/loam and sand ratios, adding or removing peat and different types of clay with the aim of replicating wild substrate consistency as best as I could, all the while comparing how fast specimens would settle in to both these new experiments of mine and conventional peat/coir and cork bark setups.

Being able to personally observe and collect in the field is an advantage. Most of us don't have that luxury, at least with the non-native tarantulas we are keeping. We're lucky if we can readily find good secondary information on our tarantulas' natural environments or their behavior in the wild.

 

[Dry Desert]

I think what is considered adequate or acceptable really depends on your current experience level, what you are looking to accomplish, and how much time, energy, and resources you have to devote to experimentation.

The current experience-based recommendations for species that have been in the hobby for a while are adequate inasmuch as the spiders kept that way are healthy and don't seem to be distressed, and people are successfully breeding them.

Just speaking about my situation personally:

Right now, I don't have an abundance of free time (I'm practicing law full time and have a commute that is 50-90 minutes each way), and space is definitely at a premium, so my tarantulas are kind of in a holding pattern right now. I enjoy observing them and caring for them, and I am rehousing them as they grow, but I'm not "growing" the collection or making substantial changes to what I do.

That may change in the future when I have more space to spread out. (When everything is stacked up, you have to shuffle everything around, and it makes maintenance take several times as long as it would if you could quickly access each enclosure.)




For beginners, I generally recommend keeping it simple and starting with one of the "tried and true" approaches. It's possible -- even likely -- that there are better setups, but it's also unlikely to be one that results in a dead spider.




I wouldn't necessarily undersell the effort. After all, you are still physically going out and making field observations, constantly tweaking setups, etc.

Still, if that is something you have the time and inclination to pursue -- and you've already established a good baseline of experience -- that's perfectly fine. I like it when other people do this and share their results, because even if I don't end up trying to replicate what they are doing, I learn something.

That being said, I'm not sure that trying to mimic nature always results in the optimal setup. After all, most spiderlings probably don't survive to adulthood in the wild, whereas most captive tarantulas reared by competent keepers do. An advantage of captivity is that you can manipulate conditions to improve survival and health.




Being able to personally observe and collect in the field is an advantage. Most of us don't have that luxury, at least with the non-native tarantulas we are keeping. We're lucky if we can readily find good secondary information on our tarantulas' natural environments or their behavior in the wild.

The only thing I can add to this very interesting topic is :-
If a T kept in a dirt box with a basic hide and fed now and again is sufficient, as they don't have feelings, or know any different, then the wonderful world of fishkeeping would consist solely of fish swimming around in small circular goldfish bowls - because they don't have feelings or know any different.

Please don't say it's irrelevant.

 

[Dorifto]

there is decades of experience and trial and error published on good old fashioned paper.

And this is a good way to understand why things failed or were succesful in the past, rather than directly sticking to those husbandries.

Imho people doesn't focus on understanding why such trial and error failed or were succesful, and this could be the difference between a healthy T or a dead one.

You mentioned avics. Great example. They were keep overly moist to be as close as their habitat without understanding how humidity works, craso error. Everybody knows the outcome. Then people started to keep them drier, which improved vastly their surviving rate. And this is perfectly understandable, because usually your own climate or house climatic conditions will provide enough humidity, without doing absolutely nothing, unless in dry climates or house conditions, add a water dish a slightly moist moss/substrate to it and you will have a very decent amount of humidity without soaking anything. Now, instead of understanding why of such change, people are passing to the other extreme, keeping them excessively dry due to the husbandry and clinatic conditions. And all of this could be easily resolved understanding things, because no one lives in the same conditions.

I'm not certain that when people speak of a creating an enclosure that replicates nature, or some aspect of it, that they are understanding the nature of the tarantula itself in order to accurately judge whether a more naturalistic set up is more or less beneficial than a plain "box of dirt" setup.

Absolutely. When we talk to active tarantulas, we don't mean, or at least not me, like a tarantula taking strolls all day around the enclosure. Simply that they show more natural behaviours, when decorating, retreating to the hides, not closing their burrows for no reason etc.

It's obvious that in captivity they won't show the same behaviours like in nature, simply because they don't have the same stimulus from predators, weather, our setups etc. But they won't act doing unnatural things like closing their burrows for extended periods of time, due to incorrect type of substrate and moisture level because of no reason, constantly rearranging their burrows... etc. for me, that's an unnatural behaviour caused by our husbandry. In nature without any negative stimulus they show up from time to time, simply that in our hands they will do it more often because they haven't those negative stimulus

Also there is no need to go full bioactive to give them those stimulus. Simple realistic plants, leaves and soil would achieve the same results.

Topsoil has existed forever in the hobby, YES but still people suggest coco fiber instead of it When it's well known that the first one has way better properties, and shows less issues under novice keepers.

 

[jrh3]

Also there is no need to go full bioactive to give them those stimulus. Simple realistic plants, leaves and soil would achieve the same results.

This is what I have been saying the whole time, maybe my choice of words were not clear and it set off a different visual. They are perfectly fine with soil, a hide, a water dish. When I say a hide, all my arboreal species have cork rounds with fake leaves on them. Same for my terrestrials, but it really depends on the species according to the setup. Some need anchor points, some fossorials need nothing but a hole.

Here is my typical adult arboreal setup that I call a basic soil, hide, water enclosure.

Topsoil has existed forever in the hobby, YES but still people suggest coco fiber instead of it When it's well known that the first one has way better properties, and shows less issues under novice keepers

Coco is safer to recommend to a beginner because there is less risk of contamination from a Home Depot bag of top soilI know people who have had 100% success with top soil, and then I know people who have lost multiple spiders from a contaminated bag. I have started using Reptisoil and prefer it 10 times to coco fiber.