Keeping Food Sources

[SpiderFriend14]

Hey everyone, I’ve got my enclosure and spider ready to be ordered, but I now have to settle on a food source. I plan on getting a juvenile g pulchripes but don’t know how to keep and maintain a food source. My main question is should I keep crickets or other things like grubs and worms and how to care for them. Thanks - SpiderFriend14

 

[NoxBaelfire]

Honestly, I think the easiest feeder for when you just have 1 spider would be a cup of mealworms in the fridge. Not everyone likes mealworms, though. I personally have a superworm colony and am looking into a Dubia roach colony, but that probably wouldn't be reasonable for you for 1 spider.

 

[mack1855]

Honestly, I think the easiest feeder for when you just have 1 spider would be a cup of mealworms in the fridge. Not everyone likes mealworms, though. I personally have a superworm colony and am looking into a Dubia roach colony, but that probably wouldn't be reasonable for you for 1 spider.

This is great advise.Or if your close to a major pet retailer,just buy a couple of crickets.
You definitely don’t need to start any feeder colonies.

 

[DomGom TheFather]

One spider, mealworms.
It really doesn't get any easier than that.
You can always change it up but a cup in the fridge will be there like ranch dressing.
Good to go, whenever.

 

[viper69]

Hey everyone, I’ve got my enclosure and spider ready to be ordered, but I now have to settle on a food source. I plan on getting a juvenile g pulchripes but don’t know how to keep and maintain a food source. My main question is should I keep crickets or other things like grubs and worms and how to care for them. Thanks - SpiderFriend14

Waste of time for one T

Buy feeders get more when needed

 

[matypants]

I only have 4 tarantulas but I keep a dubia colony and sell off the excess on Craig’s list here and there when it gets to be too much.

 

[Stardust1986]

Hey everyone, I’ve got my enclosure and spider ready to be ordered, but I now have to settle on a food source. I plan on getting a juvenile g pulchripes but don’t know how to keep and maintain a food source. My main question is should I keep crickets or other things like grubs and worms and how to care for them. Thanks - SpiderFriend14

I reccomend a variety, roaches are the most nutritious, but wax worms offer more fat when your tarantula is done with molting, the best advise I can offer is suggesting variety, and gut load your feeders

 

[mack1855]

and gut load your feeders

I,m curious...gut load with what?.And why for tarantulas.

 

[matypants]

I,m curious...gut load with what?.And why for tarantulas.

Feed your feeders nutritional food. What your food eats, you eat. Same for tarantulas. For instance I give my dubia colony vegetarian baby chick food. It’s packed with nutrition.

 

[The Grym Reaper]

I,m curious...gut load with what?.And why for tarantulas.

It's the whole "put them in a separate container overnight with some fresh fruit/veg prior to feeding them off" thing that got carried over from reptiles, it's kinda pointless tbh. IIRC, it's supposed to be more beneficial for the animal you're feeding the insects to if those insects are filled with food in varying stages of digestion (rather than a gut full of mostly undigested food because they've probably been starved prior to being "gut-loaded") which can be basically achieved by giving your feeders a constant supply of food.

 

[mack1855]

@The Grym Reaper ,ya I was kinda being sarcastic.

 

[matypants]

I have a colony of feeders that I’m not gonna just starve or feed crap to every once in a while. Lol

 

[Hollownion]

Personnaly i got ten Ts from adult to sling, as feeders i keep small mealworms in fridge, two colony of crickets ( size 2/4) and a colony of red runner roaches, both in more or less big plastic containers ( i like to vary feeders and i think that spiders like it too ), i feed them with half fresh fruits/vegetables and beetle jelly.
You can find a lot of videos on youtube that are well detailled on how to keep any feeders but for one T i would recommand only using a cup of mealworms, they're cheap and low on cares, in fonction of your T's size just have to adapt their sizes

 

[LucN]

For 1 T, a G. pulchripes, you're better off making a run at your LPS and buying feeders as needed. Crickets are going to be a greater success than mealworms. I would recommend no more than 2 at a time, unless they're on the small side. You can go every 2 weeks or you can span it to a monthly visit. Your T won't hate you if you go once a month. 2-4 crickets a month is plenty. Resist the urge to overfeed, which can cause your T to enter a very long fast before molting. You're better off feeding sparingly than too much. Good luck ! And welcome to the Hobby

 

[jenniferinny]

If you feel like you're going to stick with one, just buy feeders. Maintaining the feeders is more work than the tarantulas.

If you find you really like keeping tarantulas and feel like your going to get a lot more, at that point start experimenting with feeders.

Mealworms are easy, but, alternatively if you take good care of your crickets, you could just buy 6 in size small and not have to buy more for another month. They do grow and molt, so might be a bit big for your T by the end of the month, but, that's fine if you prekill the cricket before feeding and clean out the leftovers later.

I used to just leave my crickets in the bag and open it to air it out once a day and throw some water gel in. But, if you have a designated enclosure for your feeder crickets, you can keep them a lot healthier. I have one of those small cricket keeper enclosures and find I can buy a dozen small crickets and finally be using up the last one a few weeks later. The only problem with the cricket keeper is the really small crickets do fit through the gaps, I bought really small crickets not even thinking about that being a problem and woke up to a mostly empty container. My own fault, because I call the cricket keeper my 'cat TV' and leave it out on the floor by the cat beds and they knocked it over.. lol My cats love to eat crickets..

Crickets are sort of a nuisance to raise because they stink bad. I clean out my cricket keeper everyday and they still stink. You can't clean it out like that if you're trying to raise them because then you clean out the eggs too. You really want to raise them in an outbuilding or something, not your house. I have the beginnings of a discoid roach colony and those guys don't stink at all after a week compared to a dozen small crickets.

Right now, I have a couple species of fruit flies that I use for arboreal slings, I have a bean beetle culture that is sort of for that borderline between slings and juveniles, I have an order placed for wood roaches as another one to try. But, even so, I'm still buying some crickets.. lol I'm definitely spending way more time on feeders than on the tarantulas, but, that's cause I'm still experimenting with what I want to use going forward.

 

[PomPom]

It's the whole "put them in a separate container overnight with some fresh fruit/veg prior to feeding them off" thing that got carried over from reptiles, it's kinda pointless tbh. IIRC, it's supposed to be more beneficial for the animal you're feeding the insects to if those insects are filled with food in varying stages of digestion (rather than a gut full of mostly undigested food because they've probably been starved prior to being "gut-loaded") which can be basically achieved by giving your feeders a constant supply of food.

Leopard gecko owner here. There are two different meanings of gut load, one is to simply feed a healthy maintenance diet to the feeders before they're eaten by the reptile and the other is to put a few feeders in a separate container and force feed a diet that is high in calcium (around 8%) in attempt to alter the calcium to phosphorus ratio 1:1. The first gut load meaning is what the majority of the reptile community uses.

I feed my feeders a maintenance diet to make them strong and healthy and put a few in a separate bin to force feed a proven gut loading diet such as Mazuri Better Bug, Repashy Superload, or Zukudla. Feeders that are fed a gut loading diet that is actually proven to alter their calcium to phosphorus ratio are separated from their main colony because the calcium levels in the 3 brands above tend to kill off the feeders within 96 hours from the high nutrient levels. No fresh fruits and veggies are advised to be served while gut loading the feeders with a proven fortified diet because the feeders will prefer them over the gut load, keeping the diet from altering the calcium to phosphorus ratio to targeted levels
( or at least try to, there are a lot of factors that effect how well a gut loading diet performs such as the position of cricket food dish from egg cartons, temperature, cricket life stage etc.). A wet paper towel or cotton ball should be used instead. Zukudla is the best gut loading diet that I know of and it was able to increase calcium, vitamin A, D3, and E over the minimum requirements of reptiles and maintain it for an impressive 4 days in crickets ( most gut loading diets alter the nutrients in feeder insects up to peak levels in 48 hours then begin to drastically drop after).

https://patents.google.com/patent/US9480278B2/en

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2014/0030375.html

https://nagonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Hunt-EFFECT-OF-A-PRODUCE-BASED-GUT-LOATNG-DIET-ON-MINERAL-VITAMIN-AND-CAROTENOID-CONTENT-OF-ADULT-CRICKETS-ACHETA-DOMESTICA.pdf

https://nagonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Granados-CALCIUM-GUT-LOADING-OF-MEALWORMS-TENEBRIO-MOLITOR-AND-THE-BENEFIT-OF-GEL-WATER-OVER-APPLE-SLICES-FOR-MAXIMUM-CALCIUM-GUT-LOADING.pdf

https://nagonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Brooks2-Brooks-Harris-2017-Gut-loading-diet-evaluation-for-crickets-mealworms-superworms.pdf

https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=8223&=&context=etd&=&sei-redir=1&referer=https%253A%252F%252Fscholar.google.com%252Fscholar%253Fhl%253Den%2526as_sdt%253D0%25252C6%2526q%253Dmazuri%252Bbetter%252Bbug%2526oq%253DMazuri#search=%22mazuri%20better%20bug%22

https://atrium.lib.uoguelph.ca/xmlui/handle/10214/6653

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[PomPom]

For my tarantula, I just feed her the feeders that are fed a maintenance diet. There doesn’t seem to be any nutritional diseases in tarantulas through the nutrients their feeders naturally comprise of so I would just worry about feeding the feeders to be as healthy and strong as possible.