What do Tarantulas eat?

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Feeding your Tarantula

Not only is feeding inexpensive and easy, it can be enjoyable too. All pet tarantulas are insectivores, meaning they eat insects! However, do keep in mind that they are also opportunists, meaning, if given the chance, some tarantulas are able to subdue small lizards, snakes, birds and even mammals such as mice. Generally crickets are the main go to choice when it comes to feeding tarantulas.

Keep in mind that most of the appetite coming from your tarantula is in fact induced by the animals (the jumping around of a cricket, wiggling of a worm etc). Mainly, always ensure that the food source, the crickets, are fed well. Since most of time crickets are going to be generally the main food source, these are the majority of the nutrients and minerals that will be provided to your pet tarantula.

Gut Loading Your Cricket

All this means is feeding your cricket, which is more than likely going to be your Tarantulas main food source nutritious foods. This ensures that the food you feed your cricket will be passed on to the Tarantula. Although there are products out there that make it easy by prepackaging the vital nutrients required for your Tarantula such as, Fluker’s Orange Cube and Fluker’s High Calcium Feed are a little pricey. The other option would be to feed the crickets things such as Leafy Greens (Broccoli, cabbage, kale), Tropical Fish Flakes, Potatoes, Pre-packaged reptile food and even dry cat food.

When feeding your tarantula, it is advisable to feed it about once every week. Drop in about maybe 1 – 2 crickets. The tarantula will probably finish it within a day, however, if any prey is uneaten dead or alive, always remove them from the tank within 24 hours . A good guideline is to feed your tarantula at night and remove the next morning if anything still remains. It is extremely important to do this because uneaten insects or other food of your choice can be very stressful to tarantulas. In extreme cases, it has been know that preys can even damage / kill the tarantulas if not eaten. Always remove any remains of the prey so that it does not create an unhealthy environment for your tarantula. As a rule, live prey is generally required, however, some tarantulas (younger ones) will scavenge on dead animals. When feeding your tarantula use tweezers, I personally use 12-Inch Stainless Steel Tweezers because of the stainless steel material and wide fronts but any tweezers should do fine. Grab the cricket in the middle section and drop it close to the tarantula (within a leg span of the tarantula).

Crickets are what I feed my Tarantulas and when I do, I get them at Bassett’s Cricket Ranch

What do tarantulas eat?   What do tarantulas eat?   What do tarantulas eat?

A way to know if your tarantula is starving is through the size of its abdomen. If it is not round, but rather skinny or even grape like, then you should definitely feed it. In general, you can never over feed younger tarantulas, however, this is very different with adults. Unlike the young, adult tarantulas might only eat once a month even as little as a few times a year! Over feeding them causes their abdomen to be overly large and this will impede its ability to move around with ease.

 source: mikes tarantulas