Spider feeding theory

[Matt Brett]

***this post is not here to contradict any advice given on the main pages on keeping spiders, it's pure opinion open for discussion***

Thought I'd add what I've seen when feeding our B.Smithi.
I've read so many posts now on many forums that advise to feed your spider two to three crickets every few days when they're adult.
I've also seen advice to not over feed your spider or it will moult too frequently and may die early.

What I want to know though is; is it possible to overfeed a spider? I have no idea about other species as I have one spider.

Here are my observations on our B.Smithi.
I started out by feeding her two to three crickets every few days as recommended, but this has hardly ever worked out with our spider. In the past, she hasnt always eaten these.
I havent taken them out though. I've left them instead. I don't like leaving the crickets to certain doom so if they're in there alive after a day, I put in a small amount of lettuce. They eat this.
The spider isn't always interested in the crickets. If she doesn't eat them right away, I've observed the following behaviour when the crickets come to investigate;

a) Avoids them
b) Slaps down and scares them off
c) Kills them

I've only observed the third option when we first put her in to her environment and she wasnt happy. I would assume she killed it to just be done with it and try to settle in without distraction.

After any of the first two options occur though, the crickets then never bother her again. They hang around the water dish and sit on the plants. They keep healthy, they chirp occasionally and the spider doesn't flick hairs or anything.
Eventually, she will get hungry. When she does, she catches one with no trouble and eats it.
This could be individual with our spider as she *never* catches anything that passes her burrow. She always goes out to catch her food. Recently, my girlfriend saw her climb a tank wall, reach out a leg to one of the plants that had a cricket on it, and then shake the plant continuously until the cricket fell off, at which point she ran down the wall to catch the fallen cricket (but failed that time heheh). I thought that was pretty remarkable to be honest.

Anyway, more recently she seems to have been much more hungry. I think it is because she has moulted fairly recently. We put in two crickets, and within a few hours she had eaten both. She usually takes longer to want to eat both, so we put in a third later that night.
She caught that too straight away.
Since then, she's been exhibiting all the behavour she does when she wants food. Spreading out all legs near where the crickets usually hang about feeling for movement. She's gone over to where they sometimes sit near the water, and she's gone to her feeding place. So, taking the hint we're going to put in another.
It's at this point that the guides start to advise against overfeeding. But the thing is, she seems to actively want the food, and when she doesnt want food...well we *know* when she doesnt want food because she's been so stubborn in the past (days, sometimes weeks worrying if she's ever going to eat again lol). So I'm thinking, I keep feeding her until she doesnt eat any more. I reckon it will be after this next feed.
When she hasnt been interested in food, I've seen her wait three weeks and not eat anything, with the crickets living normal crickety lives until she got hungry.

Anyway, what do people think? I realise it might well differ with species and personality types, but I'm now going to stop automatically doing the two to three crickets every few days regardless, and start on the 'wait til she's eaten what she has and wait for her usual hunting for food signs to show up'.

Wall of text ends here by the way

[Peter Lacey]

Matt, you're overfeeding. 6 crickets per month is fine, 2-3 crickets a week is what many suggest. A cricket a day as described by you is more than your T needs. Tarantula are opportunistic feeders, they'll eat when foods around because they're quite used to going without food for long periods.
It's great that you have a T that actively hunts the crickets, must make it enjoyable to watch.

[Peter Roach]

I see that you have found out a closely kept secret

Spiders cant read and so havent read the 'guides' and so they do whatever they want, when they want without consulting the experts 'guildes' on how they are supposed to act

I fed my 1cm smithi slings a few pinheads twice a week but now they are about 3 -3 1/2 cm they get fed a single cricket once a week, when they are adult I willl probably feed them once or twice a month BUT this is all pie in the sky because I shall have to see what their individual feeding habits are when they reach adulthood as all spiders are different even when of the same species.

[James Box]

that's very true...the slow growers like Brachys and Grammy's, in my limited experience, only eat when they want to, whereas the faster growers will cane anything i put in there.
spiders haven't read the books, as P Roach says, and are more individual than we expect.

Matt, i think you're just learning the feeding patterns of your spider, which is great. the fact it hunts and shows some interesting reasoning and behaviour is fascinating! wish i had the time to observe my spiders properly for a few hours each lol might see some of that too
as for over-feeding...well keep an eye on your spider's abdomen. if it starts to baloon and ends up being dragged...your spider needs a good long diet (will probably be fine for a few months like that!!!)...if she's maybe 1.5 times bigger than carapace, she's probably fine.

that being said, i have a feeling (anyone with more knowledge PLEASE correct me) that with these slow-growers and their periods of long fasts, it may be that they have a more developed sense of when they need nutrition than we realise, and thus eat well from time to time and then stop...and observing that cycle may help maintain their well-being.

one warning though, Matt...it's good you're providing food for the crickets, but i wouldn't trust to that alone to keep your spider safe from their appetites. i have lost pets to them, and so have many others. a moulted spider is especially vulnerable.
i don't tend to strictly observe the 24 hour rule of removing uneaten crickets, but i do try to get them out if i can soon...just not worth the risk.

edit: oh one other thing, spiders get most of their water requirements met by eating, so it's possible she feels a bit dry at those times she gorges...if i'm not wrong, a moult uses alot of nutrients and water up so that's why they tend to want to eat a good week or so after a moult.

[Colin D Wilson]

Two bits of info aren't clear to me in your post Matt.

Is your smithi an adult?
what size crickets do you feed.
the ratio of size between the two is a significant factor in this discussion.

I have to agree with Peter about the active hunting though, must be nice to see it happening often.

At the end of the day spiders are the master of improvisation, adaption and overcoming natures obstacles, this feeding regimen debate is one of the oldest amoung the hobby and always sparks a lot of different responces.

That was a nice "wall" of text to start this one off

[David Bloor]

Hi Matt,
I'm fairly new to keeping T's and learning all the time. One mistake I've made is leaving a cricket in for too long and ending up with dozens of offspring crawling around the tank. Being so small some escaped and were spotted around the living room . After taking advice from my local T store, I've done a complete tank clean so I won't be making that mistake again. Also having baby crickets running around the house doesn't put you in the wifes good books.

Cheers Dave.

[Matt Brett]

Ta for the responses so far. Thought I'd clear something up that was in the first reply; I'm not feeding one per day on a regular basis. More recently, she has had about one per day and that's been for a total period of three days. She's only eaten four, which really is one more than the recommended amount. Then again, these crickets were a bit smaller. I'm not worried in the slightest.

To James: yes she has not long moulted. About three to four weeks ago.
I hadnt heard of crickets being a threat to adult healthy spiders (as in not in the moulting process or being too young etc). There are never more than three in the tank at any one time though, and more recently I tend to just put in two and see how she goes. When I've put in three, they seem to get a lot more obnoxious and try their luck a bit more. She always sees them off, but they will try that much harder than when there's only two of them. I dont know why, perhaps it's because they get competitive fighting eachother and stuff and go in search of other things to aggravate.
When we first got her, she was nowhere near as confident and seemed to have trouble with catching crickets. I think the shop had pretty much only fed her pinky mice or half dead crickets that they kept in the fridge too long.
Being presented with bigger faster crickets made her wary. She'd watch (I guess observe might be more accurate) them for a while and sometimes step on them but always back off.
Now, she has no trouble at all. It's got to the point where she literally walks over to where they hang about and just picks one up and carries it back to her feeding area.

To Colin: Yes she is an adult. At least as big as my hand anyway! I feed her the standard size crickets I guess. I mean I dont specifically buy smalls. But the ones I do buy tend to vary in size, I suppose it depends on how adult they are and how alpha male etc This week though, the crickets were rather small. I bought this box specifically as it wasnt so cramped in there and there werent so many, plus there wasnt a carpet of dead cricket bits either, so I figured they were fairly healthy.
Incidentally, I feed the crickets on organic lettuce. They devour it pretty fast. I put in oats the other week based on something I read, but they didnt touch them and they only went all mulchy and disgusting, so wont be doing that again.

Her abdomen currently looks totally normal. It's not too small, and it's not too big either. She isn't dragging it along and she looks acitve and healthy.
As far as the crickets bothering her goes. It doenst really happen. I think it's because I have two plastic vine-ish plants that hand down from the ceiling of the tank. The crickets find this and *always* use it as a place to live. They spend a lot of time sat on the leaves and going up and down. The spider doesnt like the plants though and has tried to pull them loose on several occasions.
They arent a big part of the tank though and they dont stop her doing anything so I keep them there as the lesser of two evils (the other being the crickets with nowhere to go except her burrow).
Amusingly though - and I dont know how she does this - she's tied the two bottom ends of hte vines together so they're more out of the way. I've seen her do this about four times now, as if she brushes past them then they come loose. It takes her AGES to do it, but she manages to tangle the twirly vine bits together.
I call that a compromise

She is very fascinating to watch though. I love that she hunts her food, it is very fun to watch if you have the two hours spare to observe one leg forward, 15 minutes of nothing, another leg forward and so on lol.
She is without doubt the craftiest sneakiest spider I've ever seen heheh.

To summarise though; obviously I know there is a limit to feeding. I'm not just going to chuck a cricket in day after day. What I'm saying though is that I think there needs to be some flexibility. Rigidly sticking to two to three every few days might well be 'sufficient', but it might be beneficial to change once in a while based on behaviour.
With mine, she sometimes eats nothing for over a week, then at other times she seems to want to go hunting and will eat all crickets in the tank and then go looking for more.

[Tom Forman]

I would never pureposefully try to overfeed my T's but I have read alot of people starting out with T's feeding stupid amounts like once a day for a whole month, then beeing surprised their T went on a diet for the next 9 months....

If you are happy with that kind of feeding regime, then fine, the T knows when it has had enough and will go on a food strike eventually.

I would much rather have my T eat sparingly but regularly however. Better for me anyway and I'm sure better health wise for my T also.

Matt, if your T is wanting more food, feed it more by all means, it does not sound like you are sending it off to Mcdonalds every day like some...
And even then, they just take a very long diet and they corret the overfeeding themselves.

PS: My T's up till now are alwasy on the lookout for a big meal shortly after a moult. I'm sure that's all it is in your case. She should be back to normal feeding next week again.

[matthew spooner]

at this years annual lectures, i sat and had a lengthy chat with Andrew Smith with regard to feeding patterns and the amount i feed my b.smithi. the way he described it to me was that in the wild, tarantulas are lean and mean and dont eat three square meals a day, he suggested that perhaps i was over feeding mine at 3 locusts per week. Andrew told me that he only feeds his brachypelmas a couple of locusts and one grass hopper a month, and this is plenty, with him being an expert on tarantulas, in particular brachys and the fact that he has a very geriatric collection lol, i decided to take his advice. grass hoppers were a little hard to come by so now my Ts just get 4 locusts per month. i thought this a little mean at first but they appear no different for it and hopefully i will get full life expectancy from them.

[Colin D Wilson]

I think the term "Oportunistic hunter" sums up the tarantula nicely.

Matthew you're not telling me that you sat and talked to Andrew for half the night JUST about feeding patterns.......Come on spill the beans, what other little secrets did you come away with !!!

[matthew spooner]

lol that was it, i was talking to him about brachys in general as i had just purchased a b.ruahni from Lee from thespidershop. i have had alot of talks with Andrew before as he does alot of talks for us at our club meetings, i was also trying to sweet talk him into giving me a free copy of his dvd lol