Haha thank you so much this does actually help me a lot!! I will defanitely consider temperature; I'm very glad I asked because I never even knew it played such a role in growth. Again thank you for replying!!Welcome and congrats on your sling! An B. albopilosum (kudos on using the scientific name!) is a great T to start with.
What size is yours? As you've probably read, this is a slower-growing species, so the little guy/gal will be with you for quite a while. I got my first B. albo in October of 2014 as a 1/4" sling. It's now about 2.5" long or so. Males will also usually grow faster than females, which is something to consider.
If you want to feed yours more often in hopes of improving the growth rate (sometimes referred to as "power feeding"), it's important to remember that temperature will play an important role in how fast your sling grows. Higher temps mean faster metabolisms for these guys. If you keep your little one at room temperature (which is completely appropriate) you will get slower growth even if you try to feed it more. Many folks forget that in order to "power feed" their slings, they need higher temps!
My temps in the winter are around 70-75 and 75-80 in the summer months. My growth rate was pretty slow. A buddy of mine keeps his around 80 all year round, and his hit about 3.5" in the same amount of time.
Because mine started off so tiny, I was feeding it as much as it would eat. This would often result in some fasting. I've found that if you feed the slower growing species a lot, they will fatten up fairly quickly, but then take forever to molt. For example, my little girl emerged from a molt a few months back voracious. I fed her a few large meals over the course of three weeks, then she stopped eating for four months. Fasting tends to freak out those new to the hobby.
Personally, I'd figure out what your temps are going to be, and feed accordingly. If your home is on the cooler end, once a week will be perfectly fine. If you're from a warmer locale, then you can probably get away with feeding smaller meals twice a week. I would not, however, recommend using supplemental heating, however, to jack the temps up.
And, if you're getting impatient waiting for your little one to grow up, just do what most of us have done...buy more tarantulas!
Hope that helps!
