Should I worry?

[Derrick Cobb]

I am new to the hobby of tarantula care, and had a question concerning humidity for my t's enclosure.
I have a grammostola rosea in a 5.5g tank, that I have placed on counter that connects my kitchen to my living room. Now my concern is that my ceiling fan is almost directly above my t's encloser and when its on the humidity gauge will read somewhere around 5 or lower, I figure that might be to low and could have negative ramifications for the well being of my, T. I don't have central cooling in my house and where I live it gets so hot I couldn't imagine going without running the swamp cooler or at least this ceiling fan. Ideas?

[Peter Roach]

Throw the gauge in the bin and stop worrying.

Humidity gauges are notoriously inaccurate. The dial types are worse than useless as they are so inaccurate its off the scale. Many of the digital types can be out by as much as 20-40%.

Grammostola rosea live in one of the driest places on earth so humidity isnt anything to worry about. . . . Have you read >>> THIS ? <<<

[Derrick Cobb]

Ok so the fan won't dry her out?

[Stanley A. Schultz]

I am new to the hobby of tarantula care, and had a question concerning humidity for my t's enclosure.
I have a grammostola rosea in a 5.5g tank, that I have placed on counter that connects my kitchen to my living room. Now my concern is that my ceiling fan is almost directly above my t's encloser and when its on the humidity gauge will read somewhere around 5 or lower, I figure that might be to low and could have negative ramifications for the well being of my, T. I don't have central cooling in my house and where I live it gets so hot I couldn't imagine going without running the swamp cooler or at least this ceiling fan. Ideas?

STAN'S NEWBIE INTRODUCTION

DID YOU HEAR THAT? THAT WAS THE NEWBIE ALARM!

WELCOME TO THE HOBBY!



WELCOME TO THIS FORUM!

Okay, so we're all newbies, often for a long time. 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 WILD CAUGHT 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.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The comments and instructions in Care and Husbandry of the Chilean Rose Tarantula are applicable only to wild caught G. rosea. CAGE BRED AND RAISED G. rosea are no different than any other captive tarantula and are best cared for just like any other arid species. See Growing Your Own for further information.

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!

All of your questions and many more that you didn't think to ask should be answered by visiting those webpages, but read the books as well as soon as possible.

Get back to us about anything you don't understand.

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

[Peter Roach]

Ok so the fan won't dry her out?

You want the fan to dry her enclosure !!

Suggest that you read Stans post and then go and buy his book