What to feed your tarantula?
- Thread starter poppaJT
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when u join this site theres a go to page that gives u a complete run down of things you can do on here. one of those things is a search function. if u type in food and tarantula u will most likely find things you should/should not feed your tarantula friends. but in the mean time of you learning how to use the search function to answer your questions...heres a freebie....
in order of great to good for nutrition and gut load-ability (this being a personal opinion NOT scientific study)
Roaches (including dubia, lobster, red runners, orange heads, discoid and hissers), Crickets, Wax worms, Butter worms, Phoenix worms, Super worms, Meal Worms, Earth Worms, Pan fish worms, tomato horn worms (lunar hawk moth caterpillar), Fish, baby mice, anoles (and other VERY small lizards), Green Bottle Flies, Fruit Flies....last, and definitely LEAST *other tarantula and your finger.
*disclaimer - i do not ever expect someone to feed their tarantula OTHER tarantulas, the thought of it is disturbing. But it does happen in the wild and during mating. As for the finger comment, though its good nutrition im sure, we dont want our pets eating our flesh...thats just weird.
hope this helps
P.S. - All of those items should be available to you via Captive Breeding, you should NEVER pull anything from the wild and throw it in with your T, you have no idea what that feeder has been through and what disgusting or dangerous (to your pet) things it could have in or on its body.
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Somehow my spiders don't like dubia. They just ignoring them. They are slow, they have hard shell and they burry themselves. So I feed them with blatta lateralis. They don't dig, they are very fast and they are silent(apart from dubia wich make lot of noise).
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From this thread:
http://www.arachnoboards.com/ab/showthread.php?t=145454
http://www.arachnoboards.com/ab/showthread.php?t=145454
The stickies really are quite helpful if you take the time to read them.
XzotticAnimal420
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I used to feed crickets, but its highly frowned upon to buy crickets from most LPS. Plus, I actually had an incident where I believe the crickets were infected with something and they killed several of my T's. Since then, Ive started to breed Dubia roaches. I can feed the babies to my little guys and the adults to my bigger T's. It works great and they are better for your T than crickets are. I dont like mealworms, only because sometimes, if they burrow and you dont find them, they turn into these nasty beetles, that even your spiders wont eat.
Really? My spiders eat those beetles.....:?
XzotticAnimal420
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My spiders, all of them stay on the other side of their enclosures when they are in there. I always have to pick them out, and its worse than when they were worms
lol. I figured some T's might, but Ive never had a single T eat one.Well I guess both of mine A. versicolor and B. smithi are exceptions who like these beetles.My spiders, all of them stay on the other side of their enclosures when they are in there. I always have to pick them out, and its worse than when they were worms
My B. smithi is a little picky, she hatews dubia roaches and she doesen't even move when one climbs literally into her mouth and she doesen't like mealworms that much though she likes them from time to time and my A. versicolor is the same. Both of them just love superworms, lateralis roaches, mealworm beetles, superworm beetles and crickets.- Joined
- Jun 12, 2006
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ive had best luck with b.lateralis.
i dont do crickets, mealworms or superworms anymore because of mite issues i was having...
i havnt had any mite problems since i switched to lats. the big girls get dubia and hissers or a trillion lats at a time. i did notice though that some of my Ts wont eat certain types of roaches. i havnt had luck getting any to eat discoids.
i breed many other things (herps and rodents), when something is born a little...wrong it gets culled via the big spiders. i dont see much wrong with adding some verts here and there, my gravid girls also get a small mouse to get them nice and plump for egg laying. some disagree, and it is by no means necessary, but it works for me and ive yet to see anything bad come from it. the verts are fed pretty sparingly.
i would not feed my spiders fish. especially 'feeder' fish from the store. they are treated with all kinds of nasty stuff and goldfish especially are full of nasty stuff.
i dont do crickets, mealworms or superworms anymore because of mite issues i was having...
i havnt had any mite problems since i switched to lats. the big girls get dubia and hissers or a trillion lats at a time. i did notice though that some of my Ts wont eat certain types of roaches. i havnt had luck getting any to eat discoids.
i breed many other things (herps and rodents), when something is born a little...wrong it gets culled via the big spiders. i dont see much wrong with adding some verts here and there, my gravid girls also get a small mouse to get them nice and plump for egg laying. some disagree, and it is by no means necessary, but it works for me and ive yet to see anything bad come from it. the verts are fed pretty sparingly.
i would not feed my spiders fish. especially 'feeder' fish from the store. they are treated with all kinds of nasty stuff and goldfish especially are full of nasty stuff.