Tarantula Diet

[antinous]

Update on Hornworms. Got more people saying they are juicy and one told me they are good for hydration but thats about it. Anyone agree with that?

Not really Nutritious...

You can feed them. You can even feed the moths they turn into, arboreals seem to love them.

 

[Hamiltincolin25]

If your t is willing to eat them I go for meal worms 10/10. Don’t know about prices but they are easier to care for easier to find, and create a lot more movement so cautious ts will way it sooner as I’ve found( my nervous p. Murinus goes airborne for them and nothing else).I also just prefer them cause if you order a few to many pop em in the fridge or use em as fishing bait.

This is a bald faced lie

I think the person giving them the info was talking about how wild caught crickets or feeders in general have possible pesticides/parasites. Not for sure though

 

[Dman]

Update on Hornworms. Got more people saying they are juicy and one told me they are good for hydration but thats about it. Anyone agree with that?

Not really Nutritious...

Some of mine like hornworms. They are larger and seem to fill my T's up longer. I also don't get the carnage of destroyed roaches to clean out. They can bite so make sure your T. is larger.

 

[Serpyderpy]

I use mainly mealworms for all of my tarantulas and other inverts and they seem to get a decent response out of them and they're quite juicy if you feed them up. I can grab a big tub of them for around £2 at my local reptile shop and they usually last me a while as I have a lot of smaller slings that will munch on half or even a tiny cut up bit, so one meal worm can easily feed around four or five tiny slings. I keep them in the small tub they come in as I won't be making a breeding tub anytime soon and I feed them oats, hamster food, and fresh vegetables when I remember about them.

I have tried locust from time to time but I find my tarantulas don't respond too much to them. If I leave them in alive the way they jump usually spooks smaller slings and even in my larger inverts they don't seem to quite know what to do. If I chop the head off they don't squirm as much as mealworms do, merely wave their back legs, which doesn't elicit a response more often than not unless I shove it in their faces or on webbing. I usually only buy them when I'm running low on mealworms and I go stock up, so I can save some mealworms for the smaller ones.

 

[viper69]

I was told that too many Crickets can cause a buildup of toxins or something. I'm not sure if I believe it though... sounds kinda odd...



what do you use? For both feeders and the things you feed the feeders?

False on crickets

All the larval insects are better than crix because they are higher in fat. So Ts grow faster. CB and I did an experiment on this with sac mates of incei.

What’s more important is how many calories your T is I taking for proper growth. This was studied by a DVM and published.

 

[Vanisher]

Feeder needs to be high in both fat and protein to be really good. My favourite feeder are karge beetke larva. They can be found in soil where i live! Sure they are wild cought, but i have not have any problems!

 

[cold blood]

Feeder needs to be high in both fat and protein to be really good.

For a reptile. Feeder nutrition is greatly over rated and exaggerated by a lot of people. People raise ts all the time on just one feeder like crickets all the time....zero issue.

For ts there is no one feeder is best...feed what your t will eat or what's convenient for you to buy. Don't over think nutrition for your spiders...all this nutrition nonsense is just another carry over from the reptile hobby that has no real bearing on the t hobby.

 

[jrh3]

For a reptile. Feeder nutrition is greatly over rated and exaggerated by a lot of people. People raise ts all the time on just one feeder like crickets all the time....zero issue.

For ts there is no one feeder is best...feed what your t will eat or what's convenient for you to buy. Don't over think nutrition for your spiders...all this nutrition nonsense is just another carry over from the reptile hobby that has no real bearing on the t hobby.

Is their any proof to this? I think different variety would have the same effect as it does on every other animal. Maybe we don't see it as much because Tarantulas are longer lived and there has been not alot of research. It would take years to decades to prove there are benefits or not from different feeders.

 

[cold blood]

Is their any proof to this? I think different variety would have the same effect as it does on every other animal. Maybe we don't see it as much because Tarantulas are longer lived and there has been not alot of research. It would take years to decades to prove there are benefits or not from different feeders.

I would say decades of people feeding one feeder, often deemed a lesser feeder like a cricket or mealie, for decades without issue would be evidence(for some 20-30 years that was what we had)....but more to the point, there is absolutely zero evidence that reptile nutritional needs translate to tarantulas.

 

[jrh3]

I would say decades of people feeding one feeder, often deemed a lesser feeder like a cricket or mealie, for decades without issue would be evidence(for some 20-30 years that was what we had)....but more to the point, there is absolutely zero evidence that reptile nutritional needs translate to tarantulas.

Fair enough, reptiles need more vitamins and minerals, aka supplements. This could be the reason solely feeding 1 type of feeder is considered fine for a tarantula. Would be interesting to see actual research done on Tarantula diets. But as stated before they are opportunistic feeders so they take what they can get. Still though, in the back of my mind, i think there maybe some benefits to feeding variety. But this could come from my reptile wired brain, lol.

 

[cold blood]

Fair enough, reptiles need more vitamins and minerals, aka supplements. This could be the reason solely feeding 1 type of feeder is considered fine for a tarantula. Would be interesting to see actual research done on Tarantula diets. But as stated before they are opportunistic feeders so they take what they can get. Still though, in the back of my mind, i think there maybe some benefits to feeding variety. But this could come from my reptile wired brain, lol.

Yeah, I think most of us nowadays do feed a varied diet, I do simply because its easy to and I like to see them taking different things, but not because of any health concerns.....same thing for feeding feeders well, it may not be necessity, but its certainly not gonna hurt.

 

[Vanisher]

For a reptile. Feeder nutrition is greatly over rated and exaggerated by a lot of people. People raise ts all the time on just one feeder like crickets all the time....zero issue.

For ts there is no one feeder is best...feed what your t will eat or what's convenient for you to buy. Don't over think nutrition for your spiders...all this nutrition nonsense is just another carry over from the reptile hobby that has no real bearing on the t hobby.

I was just asuming! I dont know about tarantulas, but in Wolfspiders it does matter. My friend is a arachnoligist and she and others have done research on how variety in food effects wolfspider slings. And it does!
I dont know about tarantulas though?