Fish as Food?

[JordanK]

I've purchased a new G. Rosea which i will post pics later. I have plenty of crickets and such in a cricket cage but my curiosity is bugging me. Can I feed my Rose (her name) a guppy? I dont plan on doing it i'm just plain curious will tarantulas eat fish?

 

[becca81]

I've seen pictures of tarantulas eating fish before, so I'm pretty sure that yours would take it. IMO, it's not worth the trouble of getting the slippery fish out of the tank.

 

[JordanK]

AH alright. Yeah after a few searches i saw a few pic's of T's eating fish. I'm being overrun by guppies (200+) so lol i'll sell a few gups, and try them as food for the T. If she doesn't want them then crickets are fine .

 

[Cirith Ungol]

Post a pic of it, it would be interesting to see.

 

[Greg Wolfe]

Guppie pie...

I'm sure a hungry T would take a squirming guppie. Never tried anything like that before, but it would be cool to see a photo of it.

 

[MyNameHere]

Well, I think a visit to Rick West's site would turn up at least one pic of a T eating a fish, but I'm wondering about the difference between *could* and *should*.

Hungry T's will eat lots of things, but would a T from a relatively arid scrubland environment even go after a fish? I guess it would depend on how you offer it, but if you offer it in a dish of water I don't know that a G. rosea would go 'fishing'. Arboreals (who seem to live in more humid areas) and those who would live w/in a reasonable distance of a body of water I could see, but not one from a drier climate.

 

[Cirith Ungol]

You could imagine that a small fish, terrified and in absolut stress, was trying to escape a larger predator by jumping out of the water. Without knowing it could happen that it jumped out of the water and landed right between the jaws of a waiting rosea... couldn't it?

 

[shogun804]

Post a pic of it, it would be interesting to see.

here ya go..http://www.arachnoboards.com/ab/showthread.php?t=38031

 

[Cirith Ungol]

After seeing all those pics (I've only seen the first ones before) I see a completely new use for all the little fish I catch every summer.

 

[Scorpiove]

I tried to get my rosea to eat a fish.... regular sized gold fish... but no go. It seemed to be a good size. But she just wasnt interested.

 

[BlkCat]

Can u try to feed them the little 10 cent fish at petsmart?

 

[pelo]

Can u try to feed them the little 10 cent fish at petsmart?

>>I'd be a little leary of feeding feeder fish to a spider.Feeders,along with new imports are treated/and the water treated for prevention/treatment of diseases and stress with chemicals/antibiotics etc.I wouldn't want to chance my spider eating fish treated with such.Fish to me just doesn't sound like a food for spiders especially when the selection of feeders(crickets.silkworms,mealworms,pinkies etc) is more than plenty to give your spiders a good varied diet.

 

[lpw]

I agree with pelo, and so do the Schultzes (Tarantula Keeper's Guide):

A major problem with [feeding pet trade fish to your T] is that ornamental fish sold in the aquarium trade are routinely doused with high concentrations of semi-lethal medications to prevent them from dying of transportation shock, disease, and overcrowding. These chemicals are absorbed and sequestered out of harm's way by the fish's liver and other internal organs. In eating several such poison-laced fish, a tarantula may receive a lethal dose from apparently healthy food.

 

[JJJoshua]

Exactly what I was going to say. I wouldn't feed my T a fish, especially not if I had other things to feed.

 

[Fince]

I wrote in short essay my personal experiences about "feeding with fish" here:

http://www.arachnoboards.com/ab/showpost.php?p=373295&postcount=28

I think, it's one of the best terrestrial food....