Raising from baby

[Paul Messenger]

Hi All,
More daft questions from a newbie. Me mam who is arachnophobic has just been to the exotic pet shop and agreed that tarantulas aren't really spiders at all, but rather beautiful. It seems I may be allowed to have one if I raise it from a spiderling. The shop has some about the size of my thumbnail. How difficult is it to raise one from that small ?
Thanks

[SelinaBailey]

Depends on species. Different species have different growth rates. Some grow incredibly slowly like G.roseas or really fast like L.parahybana

[Paul Welsh]

Hello Paul.From my own personal point of view,I only began keeping Ts almost a year ago,so I am still a beginner.It is a fantastic hobby,and thoroughly enjoyable watching your little spiderling grow,and change.The best advice I could give you is to definitely get yourself a copy of the Tarantula Keepers' Guide and have a little read before you actually offer your little baby a home.It is the bible for the hobby.And,of course,keep asking questions or search the forums here.There is so much knowledge and extremely helpful members within the BTS which has helped me greatly,to the point where I now have 8 Ts which I have reared successfully from 1cm slings.I would suggest a Brachypelma Smithi as your first T ( I now have 2 ),however,I'm sure other members will have their own personal faves.All the very best Paul !! Welcome to the best hobby on earth

[Stanley A. Schultz]

Hi All,
More daft questions from a newbie. Me mam who is arachnophobic has just been to the exotic pet shop and agreed that tarantulas aren't really spiders at all, but rather beautiful. It seems I may be allowed to have one if I raise it from a spiderling. The shop has some about the size of my thumbnail. How difficult is it to raise one from that small ?
Thanks

Ah, ha! I detect a newbie!


WELCOME TO THE HOBBY!



WELCOME TO THIS FORUM!



DID YOU HEAR THAT? THAT WAS THE NEWBIE ALARM!

Ah! So we're newbies. We've done what everybody else does: Read all the Internet care sheets. Listened attentively to everything the expert down at the local pet shop told us. Wasted a lot of money on things we shouldn't have. Incorporated a lot of things that were useless or even dangerous. Stressed out over meaningless details while ignoring the real issues. Way overkill. That's not a criticism; I'm just delineating the problems. It's just the way humanoids are, I suppose.

We can deal with all that.

There's nothing wrong with being a newbie as long as you do something about it. After 45 years of keeping tarantulas, I still consider myself a newbie. We can trace a tarantula's ancestry back over HALF A BILLION YEARS. They've had that long to develop and fine tune their lives and lifestyles. They're incredibly complex and detailed creatures. We're gonna be playing catch-up (that's the newbie part) for a long, LONG, LONG time!

The first thing you need to understand is the KISS principle, not to infer that you're stupid. Inexperienced, maybe. Stupid, I don't think so. As proof, you can speak, read, and write English (arguably one of the more difficult languages on Planet Earth), and use a computer just fine. But, I digress. As long as you supply the basic necessities of life for your captive tarantula, the less you incorporate into its cage and care regimen, the less there is to go tragically haywire. KISS, indeed!

The second thing you need to understand is that tarantulas are like no other creature you've ever kept or even heard of before. All the ingrained assumptions and prejudices that you've been taught since childhood don't apply, and may even be dangerous to them. They're neither tropical fish, reptiles, canaries, nor gerbils, and you don't take care of them like any of those animals. One of the biggest problems with newbies is trying to get them to abandon all their prejudices and begin to look at the world from the vastly alien perspective of a huge, fuzzy spider.

FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELT.
MAKE SURE YOUR SEAT BACK AND TRAY TABLE ARE SECURED IN THEIR UPRIGHT POSITIONS.
THIS IS GOING TO BE ONE H*** OF A RIDE!

Because tarantulas are so bizarre and unique, you have a lot of homework to do. To begin, you need to read the following webpages.

1) Stan's Rant. ESPECIALLY, READ THE PART ABOUT NOT TRUSTING ANYTHING A PET SHOP TELLS YOU! AND ESPECIALLY, STUDY THE FOUR RECOMMENDED BOOKS.

2) Myths.... Read the entire webpage tree.

3) Care and Husbandry of the Chilean Rose Tarantula. IF YOU HAVE A CHILEAN ROSE TARANTULA (Grammostola rosea) YOU NEED TO READ THIS WEBPAGE! If you don't have a Chilean rose you can safely ignore this one for now. Just remember that it's here for whenever you do get a rose. Or, you can read it out of curiosity. It contains a lot of hints applicable to other arid species.

4) Substrate. Because you need to know about this very basic, underlying part of a tarantula's existence.

5) Growing Your Own. This is a global, game plan for caring for your newfound little buddy. You need to figure out where it is in the vast scheme of growth and development, then start taking care of it properly from that point onward.

6) If you can possibly spare the time, at least skim through the entire Spiders, Calgary website.

Lastly, be aware that this system is not the only one available. Neither is it necessarily the best one. You'll see and hear all sorts of other ideas as you go along. But, Marguerite and I have spent decades selling tarantulas to all kinds of people of all ages, and fine tuned this system so as to make it pretty much as bullet proof as it can get. Use our system at first, until you begin to understand these weird animals. Then maybe you can experiment with some of the not-so-conservative approaches recommended by others.

You need to learn to look at the world from the vastly alien perspective of a huge, fuzzy spider. READ THE BOOKS! READ THE WEBPAGES!


This'll get you started, but you still have a lot to learn. What you do from here is completely up to you. I just hope you can enjoy your tarantulas even half as much as I've enjoyed mine!

Lastly, has no one told you of the tarantula enthusiast's lament?

"LIKE THOSE POTATO CHIPS, YOU CAN'T HAVE JUST ONE!"

You've been warned!


Best of luck. Remember, your little 8-legged Yoda is going to be giving you pop quizzes daily!