Hi everyone - new to the hobby too.

[Steph1304]

Hi, I'm really glad I found this forum as I am so new to this hobby I haven't even got my spiders yet (they are due to arrive 05/01/2022 )

It has taken me 46 years to finally get a tarantula, I was 6 when I first asked my parents but they said "no". Once I grew up, marriage, kids and a husband who isn't keen on things with "too many legs" also dissuaded me from taking the plunge, but after a recent discussion with my daughters and my husband we are all in agreement that I can adopt a couple (few) Ts.

My biggest concern was how long they can potentially live, I'm 52 now so I'm aware that a T might outlive me, but once the girls assured me they would take it on if needed, I was less worried. Hubby doesn't mind either as they'll be in terrariums, although it took a few years for him to get used to house spiders not only being allowed to roam around, but that I used to feed one of the tegenaria in our downstairs cloakroom any flies I had just stunned with the flyswat raquet.

I haven't kept inverts (other than stick insects as a kid), but I have experience caring for other more demanding pets. For a few years I used to work in a tropical fish shop (because it gave me staff discount), and I used to come home with various rescues. At one stage I had 13 tanks ranging from 60 litres to 530 litres, each with their own parameters needed for their specific inhabitants. Now after 20 years I'm down to just 1 tank and a pond outside, but some of the fish in there I've had 20 years, which is pretty good for a fish with a life expectancy of 8 - 10 years.

I also worked as a professional falconer before I had the kids so the occasional injury such as being grabbed by a buzzard doesn't worry me too much. I'm hoping not to be bitten by a T, but I have a very high pain threshold, so if something unexpected does spook one I'm not going to drop it, although I will probably swear profusely! I'm also not planning on handling them other than when necessary and I doubt that would be often.

So the 2 Ts coming are a juvenile Smithii and a juvie Caribena versicolor. I would love a T albopilosus too, but the shop only had slings left in stock and I want to learn to walk before I start trying to run. (I have got a 3rd tank coming on the same day though, ready for when more are in stock).

The tanks will be kept in a glass fronted cabinet in quite a dark, fairly quiet room (my office at the back of the house). I've ordered green lighting for during the day and red lighting for the evening and these will be mounted below the shelf which is above the tanks. I figured I could put them on timers in the same way I would a fish tank?

I also have a heatpad for the back of the cabinet so I should be able to keep the temperature relatively static throughout the cabinet. The only real concern I have at the moment is in balancing the humidity with the air circulation for the versicolour but hopefully I'll be able to manage reasonably well.

I won't be using real plants as the room and the cabinet don't get much natural sunlight, but I've ordered a few fake plants.

Another question I have is around other artificial plants. Basically because the only fake plants you should put in a fish aquarium are ones designed just for that purpose. Other fake plants may have toxins in which would kill the fish. Do spiders have similar sensitivities? I'm asking because I got a lovely fake orchid from Ikea which would look great in the versicolor tank, but I don't want to risk the spider.

Sorry for the long essay, but hopefully I've given you some insight as to what stage I'm at. Any advice would be very much appreciated!

 

[m0lsx]

Hello & welcome to the hobby & the forum.

With heating, if the room is warm enough for you, in a T shirt, or similar. Then it is warm enough for a T. T's burrow to escape warmth, so never heat from below an enclosure. I have around 100 T's & no external heating & only use lighting in enclosures that are planted with live plants.

You are far more likely to have hair flicked at you, than ever be bitten. And some hairs are worse than others. Normally, when hair flicked, simply washing your hands & lower arms does the trick, sometimes it takes a couple of washes & sometimes one of those one a day, hayfever, antihistamines.

Keep your versicolour fairly dry, with a drinking water container & allow air to circulate freely & your Versicolour will be fine. Damp stagnant air is the issue.

For plants I largely use ones designed for fish tanks, Although I do also use some trailing plants designed for Reptiles & even have some rather nice looking hanging plants made for household decoration.

I always rinse off, under running tap water, anything I put in my T's enclosure & have never had an issue.

 

[octanejunkie]

Welcome to the forum, and the hobby!

 

[Arachnoclown]

 

[Poppy2020]

Hi and welcome! Great info and good folks here!

 

[Reptisect]

Hello there and welcome to the forum for people who are addicted to big and hairy spiders!!!

 

[Enn49]

Hello and welcome.

 

[DustyD]

Hello and welcome aboard! I have some suggestions, but please understand I am relatively new (8 months) to tarantula keeping and I may have some unconventional ideas.
It is good to have multiple sources of information.

Ideally you can keep many (most?) Ts at T-shirt temperatures as m0lsx stated. But sometimes that is not possible or practical.


I live in Maine,USA which I think has similar weather to the UK. I currently use heating cable for my juvies and for my two slings a heating pad on side glass wall to provide heat at night where room temps so far dip down to 60F (15.6 C). I am looking at a small space heater but space is tighter than usually recommended for those. (And I work most overnights)

Caution: Tarantulas are attracted to heat and with heating pads and cable they tend to bask on the side closest to the heat. So at the very least make sure it is not too close/hot to them.

(Below my G. pulchra (left) and G. pulchripes before I started using heating cable)

With the cable I am able to hang it at different heights and that seems to have reduced some of the basking.

As for lighting, I use aquarium plant lights as eventually I hope to introduce live plants. I have it on a day night cycle with some red light used just before the lights go off.

I am not sure about the advantages of using green light. I put the day sun lights at 50 percent or so. It probably will affect plant growth, but I am experimenting.

 

[Arachnoclown]

Lights are another vanity for humans and not for spiders. Tarantulas are nocturnal...why would they need lighting? If you asked 10 spiders what lighting they prefer I promise you 10 out of 10 would say no lights please. Infact tarantulas don't possess eyelids to block those super high LED beams. This can cause a spider that has already poor vision to have possible eye damage. Lights should be used only for maintenance and not for vanity.

 

[DustyD]

Lights are another vanity for humans and not for spiders. Tarantulas are nocturnal...why would they need lighting? If you asked 10 spiders what lighting they prefer I promise you 10 out of 10 would say no lights please. Infact tarantulas don't possess eyelids to block those super high LED beams. This can cause a spider that has already poor vision to have possible eye damage. Lights should be used only for maintenance and not for vanity.

You make very good points @Arachnoclown and have way more knowledge and experience than I will ever have. I plan to do more research on the issue. Hopefully there is a way for me to better balance the needs and safety of the tarantulas within a bio setup.

I do have more questions, but rather than hijack this thread, I will start a new one.

 

[Steph1304]

Hi again and thanks for all your lovely welcomes and very helpful replies!

Temperature-wise I was going to mount the heatpad on the inside back of the cabinet rather than the tanks - the shop was out of stock for cable heating. So I hoped the pad and a thermostat would help to maintain a temperature of around 24C in the cabinet. On the papers I've been reading I've seen recommendations for C versicolor ranging as high as 28C but I hoped that if the spiders were cooler they could move towards the back of the tank and move towards the front if they were too warm. By monitoring their behaviour I would then tweak the temperature accordingly. I'm also now debating whether to drill some additional ventilation holes in the cabinet. It's certainly not an airtight unit, but I guess I will need to balance maintaining the ambient temperature with the humidity. Too many holes all the heat would pour out and the heating pad would kick in more often, too few and I run the risk of too humid. I get the point made about the water bowl and much of the stuff I've read tends to recommend making sure they have sufficient water for moulting, but not to go mad with misting the versicolor to avoid sudden death.

We have a similar issue to DustyD with the room temperature dropping as low as 16 - 18C at night and although my office is the warmest room in the house, reaching 20 - 21.5 C during the day (or 19C if my husband walks past the thermostat ) it tends to be a house where we all wear hoodies, sweatshirts or jumpers rather than tshirts!

Thanks for the feedback on the plants too. All the plants will be plastic coated so I can rinse them under the tap or sterilise them if needed. I avoided silk flowers as I figured they could get manky quickly.

I've attached a picture of the cabinet below and a picture of the tanks too. As I mentioned previously the room is dark. It has 2 small windows, but the next door neighbours house is just on the other side of the drive and I have the venetian blinds closed almost permanently so anyone walking up the drive cannot see who is on my computer screen (client confidentiality as I work in psychology). I also prrsonally don't like bright lighting, I have a dim ceiling bulb and a couple of desk lamps but that's it - so the green lights during the day and red at night were planned to give the spiders some form of circadian rhythm, and to allow me to monitor them while sitting at my desk without having to disturb them by opening the cabinet doors to check on them. I figured the green lights would also be closest to the type of light they would experience in the wild.

The utility room next to my office is cold, as it has no heating in there and it has a catflap, so I'm hoping to store the live food in there? The guy at the shop said to keep the crickets and worms somewhere dark and cool, so I'm hoping in a cupboard in there will be ok? The utility is usually around 15 - 16C although sometimes considerably cooler in winter, I've been reading up on gut loading but no doubt I'll be asking more questions on keeping the live food under optimim conditions soon!

Thank you again for all your advice, it is very gratefully received!

 

[Steph1304]

Lights are another vanity for humans and not for spiders. Tarantulas are nocturnal...why would they need lighting? If you asked 10 spiders what lighting they prefer I promise you 10 out of 10 would say no lights please. Infact tarantulas don't possess eyelids to block those super high LED beams. This can cause a spider that has already poor vision to have possible eye damage. Lights should be used only for maintenance and not for vanity.

Can I check this applies to red lights too? I read that spiders don't have the receptors to see red lights so that to them it will appear dark - but allow me to see them?

 

[Oursapoil]

Welcome to this forum of opportunities
Looking forward to May 2022 to see you first (of many I’m sure) baby!
Cheers!

 

[octanejunkie]

Speak to other UK keepers like @Enn49 and @ilovebrachys about temperature and ventilation. Potentially stuffy cabinets are not optimal for avicularia.
Regarding lighting, keep it simple. Ambient day and red for viewing, off at night/overnight

 

[Yvonne G]

welcome!

 

[ilovebrachys]

Speak to other UK keepers like @Enn49 and @ilovebrachys about temperature and ventilation. Potentially stuffy cabinets are not optimal for avicularia.
Regarding lighting, keep it simple. Ambient day and red for viewing, off at night/overnight

Hi and welcome to the forum
@octanejunkie is completely right what he says about stuffy cabinets.
We keep our avicularia at around 22c day time and 18c at night.
Dry substrate with a water dish around once a week we give a very light spray on the webbing (if needed)
Stuffy, damp enclosures are killers for avics so do your best to avoid this.
We don't use any additional heating or lighting for our spiders as it's not needed but personal choice of you want to be able to view them at night.
They do fine at cooler temps as I have mentioned above

 

[Steph1304]

Hi and welcome to the forum
@octanejunkie is completely right what he says about stuffy cabinets.
We keep our avicularia at around 22c day time and 18c at night.
Dry substrate with a water dish around once a week we give a very light spray on the webbing (if needed)
Stuffy, damp enclosures are killers for avics so do your best to avoid this.
We don't use any additional heating or lighting for our spiders as it's not needed but personal choice of you want to be able to view them at night.
They do fine at cooler temps as I have mentioned above

Thank you

I'll drill some additional ventilation holes in the back of the cabinet too. The main reason for keeping them in the cabinet was to ensure that if my 2 cats get into my office they won't go noseying around the tanks!

Another worry I have is seeing the meme about the top vented tanks? Mine have a mesh top which I gather from looking at the meme thread is a "no go"?

 

[DustyD]

For terrestrial Ts, the concern is that they could go roaming on the screen and get caught and injured. If I remember right there was some disagreement as to whether arboreal Ts have different "feet" to be affected the same way. I just have terrestrials in enclosures with acrylic tops. I've only caught one on the ceiling but it was in red light so my other Ts may have been dancing on the ceiling without my knowledge at night.

 

[Ditch crawler]

Wow, that's some introduction !, I read 'war and peace' quicker

(only joking), welcome to the forum

 

[octanejunkie]

Hi, I'm really glad I found this forum as I am so new to this hobby I haven't even got my spiders yet (they are due to arrive 05/01/2022 )

It has taken me 46 years to finally get a tarantula, I was 6 when I first asked my parents but they said "no". Once I grew up, marriage, kids and a husband who isn't keen on things with "too many legs" also dissuaded me from taking the plunge, but after a recent discussion with my daughters and my husband we are all in agreement that I can adopt a couple (few) Ts.

My biggest concern was how long they can potentially live, I'm 52 now so I'm aware that a T might outlive me, but once the girls assured me they would take it on if needed, I was less worried. Hubby doesn't mind either as they'll be in terrariums, although it took a few years for him to get used to house spiders not only being allowed to roam around, but that I used to feed one of the tegenaria in our downstairs cloakroom any flies I had just stunned with the flyswat raquet.

I haven't kept inverts (other than stick insects as a kid), but I have experience caring for other more demanding pets. For a few years I used to work in a tropical fish shop (because it gave me staff discount), and I used to come home with various rescues. At one stage I had 13 tanks ranging from 60 litres to 530 litres, each with their own parameters needed for their specific inhabitants. Now after 20 years I'm down to just 1 tank and a pond outside, but some of the fish in there I've had 20 years, which is pretty good for a fish with a life expectancy of 8 - 10 years.

I also worked as a professional falconer before I had the kids so the occasional injury such as being grabbed by a buzzard doesn't worry me too much. I'm hoping not to be bitten by a T, but I have a very high pain threshold, so if something unexpected does spook one I'm not going to drop it, although I will probably swear profusely! I'm also not planning on handling them other than when necessary and I doubt that would be often.

So the 2 Ts coming are a juvenile Smithii and a juvie Caribena versicolor. I would love a T albopilosus too, but the shop only had slings left in stock and I want to learn to walk before I start trying to run. (I have got a 3rd tank coming on the same day though, ready for when more are in stock).

The tanks will be kept in a glass fronted cabinet in quite a dark, fairly quiet room (my office at the back of the house). I've ordered green lighting for during the day and red lighting for the evening and these will be mounted below the shelf which is above the tanks. I figured I could put them on timers in the same way I would a fish tank?

I also have a heatpad for the back of the cabinet so I should be able to keep the temperature relatively static throughout the cabinet. The only real concern I have at the moment is in balancing the humidity with the air circulation for the versicolour but hopefully I'll be able to manage reasonably well.

I won't be using real plants as the room and the cabinet don't get much natural sunlight, but I've ordered a few fake plants.

Another question I have is around other artificial plants. Basically because the only fake plants you should put in a fish aquarium are ones designed just for that purpose. Other fake plants may have toxins in which would kill the fish. Do spiders have similar sensitivities? I'm asking because I got a lovely fake orchid from Ikea which would look great in the versicolor tank, but I don't want to risk the spider.

Sorry for the long essay, but hopefully I've given you some insight as to what stage I'm at. Any advice would be very much appreciated!

Any advice would be very much appreciated!

Write shorter posts lol