Realiable info on the NET

[seanrc]

I was wondering .. espeacially all you hard core T keepers out there.. where can i find really , good , descriptive , care sheets and info online that had more than like 5 T's on the care sheets.. iits a pain when you want to know more before you buy but you either get B<edit> or nothing at all .. i mean ive tried using search engines but almost all the sites are garbage ...where do you go or get your info... thanks ..
-sean

 

[gumby]

Look for places that dont use common names. Also look at:
www.scottstarantulas.com just click on the pic
www.petbugs.com
www.bighairyspiders.com

 

[Code Monkey]

i mean ive tried using search engines but almost all the sites are garbage ...where do you go or get your info... thanks ..
-sean

There is no such thing as a good care sheet as far as I'm concerned, nor a whole lot of what I would call reliable info online. My approach is to draw from my own experiences and read everything I can on these and other boards, allowing it all to percolate down to the most accurate picture I can come up with. Other than the occasional Sam Marshall or Stan Shultz, who both have their ducks in a row and the motivation to write it all down, most formal presentation of information is from enthusiastic amateurs parroting whatever "fact" they read a month ago.

Your best bet is to follow this or another board enough to get a feel for who actually knows their stuff and then read whatever you can from them to put things together. Trying to look for one stop caresheets is ill advised as far as I'm concerned. Tarantula keeping is at once too simple and too subtle to accurately distill down to a pat set of factors that will equal success. Just try to pinpoint an optimal temperature or humidity range for just about any tarantula from the information out there and you'll know what I mean.

 

[Scott C.]

In addition to what C.M. said, use the find posts/threads function in the members profile. By searching individuals posts you can see fairly easily if they are full of crap..... For instance, you may find through the search that the "experienced keeper's" informative post may be following their recent posting of the same questions, and not based on much experience at all......... Dosen't always help, but you'd be surprised at how easily people forget what came out the side of their neck a day, or two, or ten, ago.....
Good luck with the search.
Scott

 

[Windchaser]

I think you just found the best caresheet available up above in Chip's (Code Monkey's) post.

 

[CedrikG]

Most of the "care sheet" on the net are ridiculous. I read article from reputable person, or make my own conclusion

 

[cacoseraph]

hehehe, i platonically love code monkey

one word of warning:

i have seen reasonably intelligent people led astray by trying to find out the climate of the region their tarantula is from and make their captive habitat as close to that as possible. all the effort and what not is laudable...

BUT!!!!

It has been my HUGE experience in wild catching a variety of bugs that it is not so much about the climate as it is the microhabitat! case in point, when i am catching centipedes if i leave smaller specimens in an empty jar in the sun for more than a minute or two they will die... virtually every time. i couldn't even get live cents under 2" back to my house until i started keeping my capture bag under an umbrella during all but the coldest cloudiest months, in Southern California.

burrowers, regardless of the country of origin, should be kept MUCH cooler than a lot of people seem to think! even if the mouth of a burrow is 90*F about a foot down the dirt VERY quickly approaches ~68*F. because most burrowing tarantulas will produce a veil to cover their burrow enterance they will possibly have much higher humidity than the surrounding area.

basically what i am saying is that you really have to use some cleverness when figuring out how the spider (or any invert, really) lives and it is relatively easy to be lead astray

 

[CedrikG]

Of course ... Keeping Central African species at 40 degres celcius would be a little stupid heh. Also, in the region that get over 8 inch's of rain fall per month, I wont drop 8 inch of water in the tank per month ... Those who represent at 100% the natural environment , KNOW that. But its not a reason to keep them bone dry at all time without temperature change.

EDIT : oh my god am I really creating another dry bone substrate debate ... lol, im off, and probably wont come back on this topic because the temptation to reply to those who will argument me will be to strong!