Tarantula Care Center

When it comes to building the ideal tarantula enclosure, remember that safety comes first, for both your pet tarantula, and yourself and family.

Safety First:

While there are no recorded deaths directly from tarantula bites, some species are large enough to cause permanent damage when they bite, not to mention the scare effect when someone sees a large spider outside of any secured environment.

You will want to ensure your enclosure has a securable mesh or screen lid to avoid any accidental excursions on your spiders behalf.

A Tarantula Enclosure is Solitary Confinement!

Tarantulas are canabalistic – they will attack and eat other tarantuals kept inside the same cage, so it’s a good idea to keep them alone in separate enclosures if you keep more than one.

Most species of tarantula will be more than happy kept in a 2.5 or 5 gallon sized tank.  Some owners prefer to use a 10-gallon tank instead because it allows for a lot more options when it comes to decorating, especially if you own an arboreal tarantula that likes climbing and building it’s next higher up in the trees.

Be careful not to allow a ground-dweller or burrower to climb too high as a fall from height can seriously hurt or kill your pet.

Tarantula Enclosure Basics

Let’s take a look at the basic features every Tarantula enclosure will need to have in place to help provide a healthy, safe and comfortable environment for your pet spider.

Heating

Tarantuals naturally live in warm environments, so you will want to maintain a temerature inside the tank of around 70F – 80F.  this is typically managed by using a small heating pad inside of the tank.

Lighting

Lighting isn’t required inside the enclosure; tarantulas prefer a lower light environment, and don’t like bright lights or direct sunlight.  You may want low lighting inside the tank that you can toggle on and off to showcase your pet tarantula to visiting friends.

Substrate

Substrate is the bedding you will use to cover the bottom of the tank.  Sterilized potting soil, or similar, works perfectly well for this, and is available at most pet stores catering for this kind of pet.

Typically, you will have up to 3 inches of substrate in the bottom of your tarantula enclosure, adding more if your particular pet happens to be the burrowing kind.

A Hide

An essential addition to any tarantula tank is a place for the spider to retreat to, to hide in.  An item like a half log, or half of a clay flower potwork perfectly fine for this.

Decorations

While these aren’t required to keep your spider happy, most owners like to add a little decoration to their enclosures, i think as much to make a better display for themselves, their friends and family to look at as much as it is for the tarantula inside.

Most often, you would want to build a habitat closely resembling the spiders natural environment.  Use wooden logs, rocks, vines, and plants to create the idea home for your pet.

Cleaning Up

Most pets, like dogs or fish, require cleaning up after constantly, but the tarantula is a very clean pet.  You will need to clean their tank out from time to time, but not very often at all.  Tarantula’s excrete a fluid that doesn’t really smell, and dries up very quickly, leaving little mess to clean up after.

You should anticipate cleaning the enclosure two or three times a year, every 4 to 6 months works well.

For obvious reasons it’s best to transfer the spider into another container during the cleaning process.

A good cleaning will include picking out any insect parts not eaten by the tarantula, wiping down both the inside and outside of the tank, and replacing the substrate.

On a related note, you will want to clean out the water dish more regularly to stop stop the water fouling, and preventing mold growing, paying attention to remove dead insects that happen to drown in the dish.

Here are some links you may find useful to continue your education:

Homepage – Back to the main page.

Tarantula Species – learn more about individual species of tarantula.