Pure mealworm sling diet ?

[Nitibus]

If I feed tiny slings ( 1/8 inch ) only mealworms ( pin heads are a pain ) untill they reached about 1 inch. Would that be OK, or is it too fatty a diet ?

 

[Mina]

I would think it is to much fat. You can give them some mealworms, but try to offer some crickets and roaches as well.

 

[Hedorah99]

I have some mealwors that only get about 1 and a half inches in length. The babies are great for slings. I still wouldn't use them exclusively just because of the fat content. It may not be an issue for a faster growing sling, but I can see it becoming a problem for a Grammastola or Aphonopelma.

 

[elyanalyous]

i would agree if it was a slow grower species, that it would be too fatty. on the other hand, I have fed my fast growers almost exclusivly on mealies... with a pinhead thrown in every 8th meal or so. when they get bigger i cut back on the worms and up the crickets.

hope this helps

-Bonny

 

[Nitibus]

What I don't understand is why is a fatty diet bad for T's. What complications can I expect if I only feed mealworms untill there an inch.

 

[tarsier]

that is too fatty a diet although i've used mealworms almost exclusively on my small slings due to the fact that it is difficult for me to have a steady supply of pinheads. hoping it wont affect their long term health.

 

[guitarlust]

i use mealworms for all of my slings. i am currently working on a roach colony because i want to see the Ts hunt. i am tired of throwing the mealworms near the spider and having to watch to make sure it got the mealworm. i thought mealworms were healthy and all that jazz. seems like the husbandry is always in a state of flux.

 

[phil jones]

hi how about the good old maggot lol :drool: :}

 

[cacoseraph]

something fairly critical to bear in mind is that we do not actually know the dietary requirements of tarantulas... so everything you hear about high this is good or low that is bad or whatever is most likely speculation

something we do know, though, is that tarantulas can be raised from egg to grave, fertile, on a diet of petstore crickets

even people's anecdotes don't really tell us anything, as there is such a hideous number of variables when it comes to nutrition and metabolic processes and stuff.

another tactic would be to track down scientific accounts of what tarantulas eat in the wild. this would probably involve examining the debris in burrows as you can't exactly look for parts of bugs in a tara stomach, as you can do with other animals. i don't believe i have ever read about a tarantula in nature that eats just one bug to the exclusion of anything else

lol, i can't just quote myself