Just having a rant.....

[Lee Corless]

I know we need new comers to our hobby and I welcome them with open arms... But all to often I see on the forums "I just bought this and that how do I look after it"....
I am sorry but that makes my blood boil with anger.....

Before I bought my first spider (and ever other species I have now) I do a lot of research on them, EG where they are from so I can mimic there home, and other things that seem normal to us T collectors.
But time after time I see questions asking for help on keeping Avics or Rosies..... the simple answer is, "If you do not know do not buy"!!!!!

I am sorry for this rant, and I know some people get given Ts that they do not know about. That is acceptable.
I am upset with people buying a spider without doing research on it.

I once commented on a youtube video about how he was keeping his flame knee too humid and having the heat mat under the tank. His reply was "what do you know? you call a video of your spider moulting "my rosie sheds its skin"" *****.

Rant over....

Sorry i just wanted that off my chest.....


Btw does any one have a care sheet for a curly hair?

[Stephen jordan]

I'm no expert with spiders and my experience is "find out the hard way" but it doesnt take much to find out more and I myself have been guilty sometimes of asking the odd daft question (which I think is natural at first). I'm biding my time before I say anything to any of them simply because if you start trying to advise people it tends to get thrown back in your face and it makes me not want to post anything in forums. I find this puzzling behaviour myself and what worries me is people actively searching out aggressive spiders for some kind of self ego boost to their obviously plastic mates, Especially when they have no idea how to care for them. Most can't even be bothered to consult a good search engine and spend an hour reading. I deal in marine life, corals and other inverts and I see a lot of ignorant people that have seen "nemo" and want this without doing any work or research into this and the same is for spiders or any pet for that matter...Invariably a few months down the line mr and mrs ignorant have lost over a grand in cash and they still can't figure out what the problem is. It amazes me how they just refuse to listen to good advice. My two reef tanks are awesome and I have never lost an animal yet (I take my own advice). I will say this though I have learned so much more through this forum and a few others and four years into the hobby my passion for it has not wavered one bit. Knowledge is power and I don't understand why folk can't grasp this! Lazy people wil get their come uppence, They always do! Theres no shame in accepting advice from others with decades more experience and it merely fuels the desire to learn more as with any hobby you never stop learning and we are all in the same boat in that respect. One of the most pwerful tools in this place is the forum search engine and a lot of people are too lazy to use it! I understand your rant and I think many of us have thought this over time.

[Lee Furness]

I think a lot comes down to confidence in something that's new to you, especially when you're dealing with a living creature.

I know myself that we started out with both our first reptile (bearded dragon) and our first venture into T's this summer. Both had been well thought out and we'd done a lot of reading up - but there is simply so much information and often it is conflicting that it does cause issues especially if you do hit a problem and are trying to find the cause/solution.

But yeah reading that someone just up and bought something with zero backround research is annoying and never the way to start out. If it was a new gadget then no-one would up and buy without checking the spec's and reviews, so why people buy any animal without doing the same baffles me.

[Peter Roach]

Oh goody, we are talking about my favorite subject . . . Numpties
This subject comes up every year or so and every time it does I really try and say something nice about the numpties . . But I cant.

Edit. . . . I just wrote a long reply and deleted it, like most of my replies to the numpties.
Im generally known for being abrupt and sarcasic . . Which is true but if I didnt delete 99% of my posts before I actually pressed the submit button I would almost definately be banned from every forum i post on because I have zero tolerance for idiots and azy ¢%#¿^ who cant be bothered to use google or the forum search button.
Almost as bad in my view is the add water instant google experts, the idiots who have been in the hobby 6 months, have a few T's and have read a book and now post on every thread and act like they invented the hobby where all they have actually done is googled it and then posted their new found knowledge as their actual experience.
Ive just stopped using one UK of the smaller forums as I was grinding my teeth and chewing my laptop due to the total muppets posting, it was the blind leading the blind in circles.
Im really trying to cut down my internet time to avoid leaving teeth marks on the laptop

OK rant over

[DJKelly]

I myself have been guilty sometimes of asking the odd daft question

Nowt wrong with asking daft questions it's planks that don't make me want to eat my own earwax.

[Lee Furness]

It's okay Peter, let it all out and you'll feel better

[Colin D Wilson]

Well i've been called everything from a pig to a dog by PM after either offering some advice or pointing out some error in the way a newbie keeps/kept their spider.
I've even been insulted on other forums by some ... it's amazing that some people are dense enough to not realise that the majority of us use several forums ... or at least have friends on them that point us to the offending text.

It's behaviour like this that adds to the lack of interest growing for me in the hobby ...

I follow the guidelines laid out above by the "Great Reverend Roach" in the fact that if i wrote what i wanted to i'd have to ban myself.

There's no such thing as a stupid question .... but .... with the resources available on t'interweb then the "more simple" answers are easy to find.
I mean how hard is it to put "rosea not eating" into google or a forum search engine?

To add my opinion about the topic of this thread then basically if you dont do any research into buying an animal before you get it then really you shouldn't take the animal on !!!

I will add that there are exceptions to this ... such as finding some idiot that has an animal in appaling conditions and you just remove it from them for the animals own good ... it's then that it's acceptable to have to do research "after" you have the animal .

any way lets try to keep this thread as clean as we can.

[James Box]

there are alot of complete planks out there! that being said, with a basic knowledge, IMO there isn't a huge problem with impulse buying. i'd be a hypocrite to say otherwise... but the basic knowledge is key.

however, if someone gets something totally new, and isn't a complete numpty, it's unlikely they'll be able to kill their new animal in the few days it takes to get the information required...

this hasn't always worked for me (i have bought from a shop of numpties before who gave me totally wrong info), but asking the seller how they keep something is a good starting point, and they'll often have a care sheet. at least it's a starting point!

so what i'm saying i guess is that there is no excuse for numptitude, though i can appreciate people asking intelligent questions when the internet has come up dry (or come up wrong, another common problem...research can lead to google expert "knowledge" posted by the same and totally wrong)

[Ben Cook]

If I may....

I am very new to keeping tarantulas and I have 4 now. I did my research beforehand but every time I have asked questions on here for several reasons:
1. a care sheet is written as a "perfect world" scenario, I would rather read a care sheet and then get additional advice from people with experience of keeping them in non-perfect conditions
2. care sheets and online articles are 1 way. this forum provides a platform to ask further questions not covered by care sheet etc.
3. Who wrote the care sheet? I dont know....I ask on here because I can look through responders previous posts and see what their experience is.

[Lee Furness]

"Use the seach first!!" It's a great phrase but pretty useless advice if you don't know what to actually search for in the first place and it's opens up a can of worms when you try that and end up going off on entirely in the wrong direction with what may seem to be the answer you were looking for...

[Thomas Jessen]

If I may....

I am very new to keeping tarantulas and I have 4 now. I did my research beforehand but every time I have asked questions on here for several reasons:
1. a care sheet is written as a "perfect world" scenario, I would rather read a care sheet and then get additional advice from people with experience of keeping them in non-perfect conditions
2. care sheets and online articles are 1 way. this forum provides a platform to ask further questions not covered by care sheet etc.
3. Who wrote the care sheet? I dont know....I ask on here because I can look through responders previous posts and see what their experience is.

There is a additional thing you can do when you do your research. Check out what country and if possible the region it comes from and then go to http://www.climate-charts.com/world-index.html and see their yearly climate cycle. You have to take into consideration though how your tarantula lives, if it is a burrower, the temperature will somewhat lower than what you see, is it arboreal, then remember they seek shade in the trees, so a little lower. I use that when i research a T.

Otherwise i dont get why people rant about these things, they should just be happy that they have an active forum. Here in Denmark our biggest forum is all but dead because of rants and stuff similar to it. if they want to write something more meaningfull to themselves they should start threads and talk about that instead. If one dont like a thread, stay out, it is really not that hard to do

[ralfkonen]

Completely different opinion. What is wrong about asking a question on the BTS forum if you want good advice. Where else would you hope to find reliable information. I agree that in an ideal world people should do their homework before getting their first T. But it is surely better to ask late than never. Surely there is the risk that this "rant" might scare people to ask questions, which I know is not intended by the "ranters"
If there is another question like: "My rosie has not eaten for a month, is that normal?", well, if it bothers one than one can just skip that post and not read it. But personally I am delighted about the high numbers of responses that "daft questions" trigger. I myself am relatively new to the hobby and still eagerly soak up any information I can get, even about rosies.
BTW: this "rant" triggered a nice discussion and therefore is fun to read. Occasionally though in other "rants" things can get quite aggressive. Anybody here got a degree in psychology and can explain that to me?

[Ray Gabriel]

Hey lets be fair here, its not just newbies that can be classed as numpties, I have given advice to experienced members who seem to ignore it then later ask what they are doing wrong.

Ray

[Min Nina]

Hmm..I suppose it's understandable that people that have had a deep interest for the longest of times get frustrated when the same noobish questions are throwed at them over and over again,
but I would try looking at it more like someones true concern to make it right rather than sb's being a lazy ass.

As a (semi)nublet I personally feel that even if you try reading up on sth it doesn't always make up for 1st hand experiance.
Nor does it take away any sense of insecurity if the spider for some reason don't behave according to 'the proper spider behaviour manual'.
So you want to have the advice from someone who's had more of that experiance.

I think when you've had spiders for 5-10-15 or more years it's easy to forget that.
And even in interest specific forums it's sometimes difficult interpreting information and advice.

Advice like 'don't worry if the spider don't eat or come out of the burrow for a few weeks' -What exactly is 'a few weeks'?

As for caring and sheets...such an information sewer..

'Keep species X like you keep species Y and Species Z. Have a heat mat, don't have a heat mat. Have it on the side, some keep it under.
Humidity level is really important! Remember moist substrate but not too moist, cept my T only like dry substrate and you need to keep enough to burrow in but not any kind of material just any kind that's not picking up mold or mites or whatever.
And put in a house 'cuz they don't burrow much anyway..'

'I feed mine wild caught stuff. It's dangerous feeding wild caught prey! I feed mine mice/pinkies! You should never feed them mice! T's only eat living prey! 'Ts sometimes eat dead prey' ...bla bla bla.


That said I think it's better to ask and seem stupid than not ask and stay stupid.

[Andy Lambert]

My thought on the original post is I understand where you are comming from definatly,
But had the chance to buy a tarantula a week ago, so I did what research I could and spoke to a local tarantula keeper who gave me alot of advice.
I also searched for hours through wikipedia, and fourms, Youtube, countless locations and got alot of usefull information,

Armed with this I bought the spider, when it came down to the crunch I had a shedload of people telling me I was wrong, telling me I was doing things wrong and misunderstanding my spiders behaviour etc.

after doing the research I definatly did not think I was an expert not by a long shot, but after hearing so many conflicting things about my spider I came here and used the chatroom, Last night for instance I had a very long chat with a multitude of people that all agreed on the answers to my question and I am now quite satisfyed with that.

Now, I tried to get as much information as I could.
But half of what I looked at was wrong or conflicting, So it wasnt untill after I had the spider that I realised this.

I Don't think I was stupid for buying it or getting things wrong or for asking for help.
I was just misinformed originally. and now thanks to alot of you here I am now armed with great information.

This is a very difficult hobby to get to grips with if you know nothing about it.
Mainly because of so many species and so many behaviours and everyone practically looks after their T in a diffrent way.
so almost every keeper will tell you somthing diffrent.

In the last 3 days my spider has changed sex several times.
(not claiming it actually did)
But you get my point anyway.

And also to say, my spider is running away from locusts...the locust is an inch in size my spider is just about 4 to 4 1/2 inches..
Ill try and feed it again in a month. but still it's quite funny that this predator is running from a bug not even half it's size..

Thanks again for all the support I have been given here, it is invaluable.

Andy.