Live Plants

[loganloves]

I'm wondering if anyone knows which live plants would be best for a tarantula enclosure (if any). I've seen some people on YouTube making these awesome enclosures with living plants and they put in a drainage layer and so on. Being EXTREMELY new to the hobby though, I don't want to just see something cool on YouTube and run with it thinking "well this guy did it, so it must be okay". With all of that said, I have a Rose Hair that I've had for about 8 years now and she's in need of a rehousing. If I'm taking the time to move her and get a new set up going I was really wanting to look into a live plant for her tank... IF it is not going to be bothersome, harmful, or stressful in anyway to my T. I know a rehousing can be stressful enough as it is. My T has a rock hide and cork bark that they love to climb on and hide in/behind so those will be traveling along to the new tank. Does putting a plant in the tank benefit the T in any way or is it more for the owners aesthetic?

TLDR; Can I put a live plant in a tank with my Rose Hair and not have it be detrimental to their all around happiness?

Also thank you so much to everyone who has been SO beyond helpful to me already and thank you to those that I'm sure will soon be arriving with more help!

 

[Arachnoclown]

You can but be prepared to have it ripped out...

 

[Arachnoclown]

For your species it's not going to benefit from having a plant in there. It's a dry desert species. Use realistic plastic cactus if aesthetics is what your going for.

A tropical terrestrial or most arboreal species will do better with plants. The extra humidity helps but you will also need to increase ventilation and even introduce isopods and spring tails to combat mold issues.

 

[loganloves]

For your species it's not going to benefit from having a plant in there. It's a dry desert species. Use realistic plastic cactus if aesthetics is what your going for.

A tropical terrestrial or most arboreal species will do better with plants. The extra humidity helps but you will also need to increase ventilation and even introduce isopods and spring tails to combat mold issues.

That's the thought that I liked the most of live plants in the enclosure was that it would be like it's own little world in there with a live plant, cleaning crew, and a bomb ass T. Any suggestions on a good species for a beginner that would be a good fit for a live plant - with the humidity, cleaning crew, etc. kept in mind.

In regards to it being ripped out, I'm always game for some replanting!

Pleasing my aesthetic isn't necessarily what I'm aiming for (though who doesn't love something pretty?), more so for wanting to make an enclosure as "natural" as possible. Fake plants have been my enemy since my childhood fish keeping days. I've just stumbled upon the wonders of having a planted aquarium for my betta fish and was just wondering if it could be just as wonderful of an experience for a T! - of course minus the swimming part

 

[Arachnoclown]

Heres a few dry species with plastic plants...all of the RIP them out of the ground still but I can hot glue them down to make it harder.

Heres a Theraphosa stirmi with live plants...

Any tropical moist species will do good with plants but they can and will tear them up. Theraphosa, Pamphobeteus do good with plants. Lasiodora and A. Seemanni would do good if you planted on the moist side but still left a dry side.
All Poecilotheria and psalmopoeus(arboreals) are good with live plants. Theres probably alot more that other keepers may mention.

 

[loganloves]

@Arachnoclown THANK YOU SO MUCH! Pictures and all the information were extremely helpful!

 

[InEx Situ]

Keep in mind where you buy your plants if you are wanting to do a naturalistic vivarium. Some plants contain pesticides, fertilizers, etc. so make sure to wash them well and quarantine. I wish I can say more but @Arachnoclown covered the majority of this topic. Phormictopus, Pamphobeteus, and Avicularrinae Sub-Family do well in planted vivaria.

 

[loganloves]

Keep in mind where you buy your plants if you are wanting to do a naturalistic vivarium. Some plants contain pesticides, fertilizers, etc. so make sure to wash them well and quarantine. I wish I can say more but @Arachnoclown covered the majority of this topic. Phormictopus, Pamphobeteus, and Avicularrinae Sub-Family do well in planted vivaria.

Thank you! That seems like extremely important information that wouldn't have even crossed my mind!

 

[Stan Schultz]

I'm wondering if anyone knows which live plants would be best for a tarantula enclosure (if any). I've seen some people on YouTube making these awesome enclosures with living plants and they put in a drainage layer and so on. ...

This topic has been hotly debated on the various forums almost since internet forums first started. My own personal bias is that you need to decide whether you're in the hobby because you enjoy keeping tarantulas, or because you enjoy keeping plants. And this is decidedly true if you're a relative newbie. (See my comments in the next paragraph.) Each of these groups of living organisms pose enough challenges by themselves to occupy you for quite a while (over 50 years in my case!). Stacking the two of them together can prove to be the downfall of both hobbies and cost you a mint in the process.

Being EXTREMELY new to the hobby though, I don't want to just see something cool on YouTube and run with it thinking "well this guy did it, so it must be okay". With all of that said, I have a Rose Hair that I've had for about 8 years now and she's in need of a rehousing.

Now here we have a problem because you seem to be contradicting yourself. Partly out of modesty and partly out of an almost childlike fascination with tarantulas, I often adopt the avatar of the "newbie." But realistically, once you've been able to keep even one of these phenomenal creatures for 8 years, you're hardly a newbie. Would you care to unravel what you meant here?

Re: Chilean rose tarantulas. First, read Care and Husbandry of the Chilean Rose Tarantula. Then back up the website tree a few branches and start reading at Spiders, Calgary. Just don't try to read the whole website in one sitting. Doing so has been known to cause severe emotional and cognitive problems. (Can you imagine trying to WRITE all that?) At first, just go through one or two webpages at a time, scanning them for things that interest or apply to you. Eventually you will read them all, but without the concomitant mental issues.

If I'm taking the time to move her and get a new set up going I was really wanting to look into a live plant for her tank... IF it is not going to be bothersome, harmful, or stressful in anyway to my T. I know a rehousing can be stressful enough as it is.

Please read Stress? You Wanna Know About Stress?.

...Does putting a plant in the tank benefit the T in any way or is it more for the owners aesthetic? ...

You hit it right on the head there, my friend. In nature, tarantulas do not normally or often, directly interact with plants except as some sort of physical object or structure that accidentally occupies the spider's immediate surroundings. Literally millions of tarantulas have lived years, even decades in cages without plants, and don't seem to have suffered for it. And their keepers had a lot fewer problems caring for them too.

Another little tip: Read Tarantula Ping Pong. This is loads more fun than just sitting there, watching a plant rot!

Enjoy your little 8-legged enigma!

 

[InEx Situ]

This topic has been hotly debated on the various forums almost since internet forums first started. My own personal bias is that you need to decide whether you're in the hobby because you enjoy keeping tarantulas, or because you enjoy keeping plants. And this is decidedly true if you're a relative newbie. (See my comments in the next paragraph.) Each of these groups of living organisms pose enough challenges by themselves to occupy you for quite a while (over 50 years in my case!). Stacking the two of them together can prove to be the downfall of both hobbies and cost you a mint in the process.



Now here we have a problem because you seem to be contradicting yourself. Partly out of modesty and partly out of an almost childlike fascination with tarantulas, I often adopt the avatar of the "newbie." But realistically, once you've been able to keep even one of these phenomenal creatures for 8 years, you're hardly a newbie. Would you care to unravel what you meant here?

Re: Chilean rose tarantulas. First, read Care and Husbandry of the Chilean Rose Tarantula. Then back up the website tree a few branches and start reading at Spiders, Calgary. Just don't try to read the whole website in one sitting. Doing so has been known to cause severe emotional and cognitive problems. (Can you imagine trying to WRITE all that?) At first, just go through one or two webpages at a time, scanning them for things that interest or apply to you. Eventually you will read them all, but without the concomitant mental issues.



Please read Stress? You Wanna Know About Stress?.



You hit it right on the head there, my friend. In nature, tarantulas do not normally or often, directly interact with plants except as some sort of physical object or structure that accidentally occupies the spider's immediate surroundings. Literally millions of tarantulas have lived years, even decades in cages without plants, and don't seem to have suffered for it. And their keepers had a lot fewer problems caring for them too.

Another little tip: Read Tarantula Ping Pong. This is loads more fun than just sitting there, watching a plant rot!

Enjoy your little 8-legged enigma!

Respectfully, I don't see any problem with keeping and enjoying both fauna and flora in one biotope. I concur there are challenges in maintaining both living organisms but I don't see how keeping both plants and tarantula can prove to be the downfall of both hobbies. Would you care to explain, please @Stan Schultz? Thanks in advance!

 

[Stan Schultz]

Respectfully, I don't see any problem with keeping and enjoying both fauna and flora in one biotope. I concur there are challenges in maintaining both living organisms but I don't see how keeping both plants and tarantula can prove to be the downfall of both hobbies. Would you care to explain, please @Stan Schultz? Thanks in advance!

To be clear about this, I am not advocating against keeping both living plants and living tarantulas at the same time. For something like 45 or 50 years I grew orchids and cacti at the same time that I kept, bred, and sold tarantulas. But the plants were kept under lights in the basement during cold weather and hanging from the eaves of my home during warm weather. And the tarantulas were kept, each in its cage, in a spare bedroom, and after a time our collection expanded into part of the kitchen! (Does this sound familiar, anyone?)

But the plants and the tarantulas were not kept together! Why? Because each of the two groups of organisms has a whole list of characteristics and requirements that are sub-optimal if not outright fatal for the other. In a parallel situation, think about how many houseplants have died in your own home and the homes of your friends, relatives and neighbors. Compare that to the few that have actually survived a full year on your windowsill or the coffee table, much less flourished. Generally, bringing a plant home is signing its death warrant! We (as mammals) and houseplants (geraniums, African violets, peace lilies, etc.) have vastly different requirements for survival. Cohabitation almost always results in either one or the other perishing, and in our world it's usually the plant that takes the hit.

In the world of the tarantula, because the tarantula costs more than the geranium, the tarantula is usually the one that suffers. (A little sarcasm there.)

Rather than spending a lot of time recapitulating what has been adequately covered at length elsewhere, I refer you to page 149 of The Tarantula Keeper's Guide (current edition, a.k.a., TKG3) under the heading of "Live Plants."

(My apologies for "blowing my own horn," but the information you seek was included in the book precisely to answer your question. I saw you coming a long time ago! Incidentally, there's no need to buy a copy of the book, either. You can find a copy for free in most public libraries.)

Cheers,

 

[Stan Schultz]

@Stan Schultz thank you, I however do not feel like going into an entire discord of how, in my opinion, I'm new to the hobby. I've had one pet T for 8 years that has been more of a pet rock than anything. It's never felt like a "hobby" until I recently decided to dive further in. But again thank you for the helpful information.

Forgive me, but I had to chuckle a little about the long discourse comment, and then you went ahead and did so anyway! It's okay. It's all good. Thank you for clearing that up, though.

Roses appear to be "pet rocks" because they adapted so well to living in the stretch of desert along the west coast of South America that they've evolved habit patterns and behaviors much different than many other tarantulas. Basically, when the going gets tough for them, they hunker down and withdraw. They shut down and almost literally die. When it gets too hot or too cold, their heart rate drops as low as about one beat per minute, for instance! And, the records for both not eating and for going without molting both seem to be a few weeks more than THREE YEARS! This makes them really tough and hardy, not to mention "newbie proof." But it also tends to mislead inexperienced enthusiasts into thinking that all tarantulas are like that.

The forest species of tarantulas (but not necessarily the arboreals) generally are much more active and interesting. One of my particular favorites are the curlyhairs, Brachypelma albopilosum. They're also one of the more intelligent kinds of tarantulas. They LEARN who you are! If you go about it the right way, you can even teach them to do few very simple tricks!

If you ever decide that you'd like something different, I'd strongly urge you to get perhaps three of these as babies and start manipulating them with your bare hands as soon as you can. Apparently, before they can learn to do tricks for you they have to learn to recognize you through your body odor and perhaps your subtle behavioral patterns.

Why three? It's a sexual/behavioral thing. And a probability thing. You want a female for this sort of thing because the males will only live five years or so. The females will live 15 to 20 years. And the males tend to be hypertensive. The females are more laid back and easier to handle.

And if you get three babies of undetermined sex, you will have 7 chances out of 8 of getting at least one female. And what do you do with all those extra males? Trade them with other enthusiasts for a share of any of their offspring, perhaps. Or a number of babies of yet another kind of tarantula.

Food for thought, no?

Cheers,

 

[Tabitha]

@Arachnoclown those are beautiful enclosures, love them, they look so interesting.
All of my vivs have fake plants, I love them and nowadays there are some really amazing ones available and so like life, I found many in home decor shops, I was going to try live too, Succulents etc.
I already have heavily planted gecko, dart frog and chameleon enclosures with jungle dawn lights which are awesome for live plant growing, the quality of plant growth is amazing and I actually love growing the plants for them as much as the actual animals, but I didn’t want to get into that for the Ts so opted for lots of natural decor as far as I could but with fake plants, I get to enjoy the aesthetics and the Ts but without the plant growing.

 

[ilovebrachys]

@Arachnoclown those are beautiful enclosures, love them, they look so interesting.
All of my vivs have fake plants, I love them and nowadays there are some really amazing ones available and so like life, I found many in home decor shops, I was going to try live too, Succulents etc.
I already have heavily planted gecko, dart frog and chameleon enclosures with jungle dawn lights which are awesome for live plant growing, the quality of plant growth is amazing and I actually love growing the plants for them as much as the actual animals, but I didn’t want to get into that for the Ts so opted for lots of natural decor as far as I could but with fake plants, I get to enjoy the aesthetics and the Ts but without the plant growing.
View attachment 35246

Your plant arrangements are great @Tabitha ! you would never know that they weren't real live plants-just goes to show you can get a great looking viv with fake plants just like you and @Arachnoclown have created-its important to look for the best natural looking plants like you have used as unfortunately many that you find on the reptile market just have that 'fake plastic'look to them! well done

 

[InEx Situ]

To be clear about this, I am not advocating against keeping both living plants and living tarantulas at the same time. For something like 45 or 50 years I grew orchids and cacti at the same time that I kept, bred, and sold tarantulas. But the plants were kept under lights in the basement during cold weather and hanging from the eaves of my home during warm weather. And the tarantulas were kept, each in its cage, in a spare bedroom, and after a time our collection expanded into part of the kitchen! (Does this sound familiar, anyone?)

But the plants and the tarantulas were not kept together! Why? Because each of the two groups of organisms has a whole list of characteristics and requirements that are sub-optimal if not outright fatal for the other. In a parallel situation, think about how many houseplants have died in your own home and the homes of your friends, relatives and neighbors. Compare that to the few that have actually survived a full year on your windowsill or the coffee table, much less flourished. Generally, bringing a plant home is signing its death warrant! We (as mammals) and houseplants (geraniums, African violets, peace lilies, etc.) have vastly different requirements for survival. Cohabitation almost always results in either one or the other perishing, and in our world it's usually the plant that takes the hit.

In the world of the tarantula, because the tarantula costs more than the geranium, the tarantula is usually the one that suffers. (A little sarcasm there.)

Rather than spending a lot of time recapitulating what has been adequately covered at length elsewhere, I refer you to page 149 of The Tarantula Keeper's Guide (current edition, a.k.a., TKG3) under the heading of "Live Plants."

(My apologies for "blowing my own horn," but the information you seek was included in the book precisely to answer your question. I saw you coming a long time ago! Incidentally, there's no need to buy a copy of the book, either. You can find a copy for free in most public libraries.)

Cheers,

Thank you for the reply @Stan Schultz. I do however have some input regarding cohabitation of fauna and flora. Simply put, most houseplants are not suitable for keeping with Theraphosids. My perspective of plants suitable for keeping with tarantulas is in ways different from yours. The common houseplants consist of cacti, orchids, sometimes begonias, ficus, and some tropical plants. These plants all require varied attention and most of the time is neglected and therefore, quoting your statement, "bringing a plant home is signing its death warrant!" I concur, but conversely, I define the cohabitation of fauna and flora as a biotope. Therefore, the specified plants kept with Theraphosids are from the close proximity of the tarantula's natural locality. If we all keep tarantulas to be fascinated and learn more about them, my perspective is to house them in appropriate biotopes. In further explanation, my methodology of keeping these arachnids is by containing them in larger enclosures with flora from their native locality. Of course, as a hobbyist, we are spending plenty of money on these tarantulas and most keepers prefer to keep them in plastic containers and therefore save money to spend more on the animal itself. I have the same respect for the biotope (enclosure and flora) as much as the fauna (tarantula). Both are equally important and sustaining a functional microenvironment will prevent either one from perishing. Also, research and knowledge is a factor that contributes to the success of cohabitation. Take the dart frog hobby, for example, keepers typically spend as much money or more on the flora and other equipment than the actual frogs and the average price range for frogs and tarantulas are similar. The success rate for the frog hobby while considering both hobbies with the cohabitation of flora and fauna is far superior in frog than the tarantula hobby. Aesthetic is a factor but biodiversity is also a prime factor. In regards to plants lacking the ability to flourish in a vivarium or near a windowsill, this situation is typically lacking good husbandry (considering the availability of a functional and adaptable ecosystem). For example, most of us know that moss is difficult to grow, much less thrive in most vivariums (excluding frog vivarium). Floras are adaptable and when given the opportunity, and have a high likelihood of thriving. I grow Taxiphyllum barbieri in one of my arboreal enclosure and this patch of moss has been covered heavily in webbing. Give it a couple of weeks and the moss is capable of poking through the heavy mass of webs. In this case, my plants are given the appropriate husbandry and that comes with adequate research. In addition, most houseplants are not given sufficient care and environment to thrive, but that factor is contributed through research of the individual and afterward, applied, then there will be a breakthrough. All in all @Stan Schultz I just wanted to share my perspectives and am NOT stating that your valuable experience in this hobby is lacking. I just wanted to respectfully share my experience with flora and fauna cohabitation and my successes. @Stan Schultz