How to buy a tarantula

Getting into the tarantula hobby is an exciting process – no tarantula owner ever forgets their first T! Doing the research about how to buy a tarantula and where to buy from is half the fun, as well as considering what species you should get. You should always do a ton of research before getting an exotic pet like this, because it’s SO different from any other pet you may have had before. But even if you do loads of research about what requirements and equipment your tarantula needs, it’s easy to miss the most basic information about how to buy a tarantula.

There’s tons of information to help you figure out what kind of tarantula you should get – this article isn’t going to focus on that. This article is meant to help beginners go through the actual process of purchasing a tarantula and helping them avoid common mistakes, scams, and pitfalls. If you ask any tarantula group, you will find many owners who have been burned or scammed by sellers or sent unhealthy/dead tarantulas. Sometimes this can be totally avoided by just knowing what to look out for. Here are a few big things to consider:

Where to buy a tarantula

Buying a tarantula from a store:

Many of us learn this the hard way. I bought my own G. rosea, Spidey, from a local pet store and soon realized why it was a bad idea. First of all, most of these places treat their exotic animals horribly and do not deserve your business. Once I became more experienced in tarantula care, I realized just how atrocious the abuse of these animals is – the tarantulas are regularly put in enclosures surrounded by food items that stress them out and forced to live on WOOD CHIPS – which no tarantula likes. Their tanks are gross and there are harsh lights on them at all times. It’s enough to make you want to buy one just to “rescue it” and give them a proper home. Then, once you get past the depressing animal care, you will be misled and be told inaccurate inappropriate information from the pet store employees, who know way less than you do about tarantulas. They will tell you to buy all sorts of dangerous, unnecessary things (like SPONGES) for your tarantula, which can harm them. Another downside to regular pet stores is that most have no idea how old their tarantulas are, their sex, history, or any other important facts. These places get their tarantulas in mass quantities and usually have nothing to do with how the tarantulas were raised. In many cases tarantula owners have even been told their tarantulas were the wrong SPECIES. So in short, don’t buy from these places.

If you have to go brick and mortar, please see if there are any exotic pet stores near you or any tarantula conventions coming to your area. These people specialize in exotic pets and will be more trustworthy.

Ethical concerns

Another thing to steer clear of with big pet stores is to make sure that the acquiring and sale of tarantulas is ethical. You do not want tarantulas that are wild caught – which many regular pet shops sell. You want to make sure your tarantulas are captive bred, which ensures that the people selling this tarantula know far more about the health and wellbeing of this tarantula and are familiar with its history. It also means it is being sold ethically instead of smuggling the tarantulas out of their wild environment, which can be dangerous. My local exotics store, Ill Exotics (who also sell online) heavily supports captive breeding and that’s why I bought Blinky, my Arizona blonde sling, from them. Any reputable breeder or seller will care about captive breeding and should be able to tell you where your tarantula is coming from as well as the species, age, sex (if old enough), and history.

How to buy a tarantula online

There are also ethical concerns when buying tarantulas online, too – but fortunately fellow tarantula keepers are very helpful about unethical sellers and scammers. There are several reputable tarantula companies that sell online and have earned a reputation for providing great tarantulas in a safe ethical way. You can find a few of them here.

Something that I have been seeing more now that the tarantula hobby is growing is the rise of people being screwed over by people selling tarantulas online. While there are lots of great T owners who legitimately just want to give their tarantulas good homes and use Facebook or other forums as a way to do it, there are also a lot of people taking advantage of this online. If you go in any tarantula Facebook group, you will easily find someone who has been shipped tarantulas that were dead or not packed correctly, or people who were lied to and scammed after they paid for tarantulas they thought they were getting. Unfortunately, the internet makes it way too easy for this to happen and scammers to delete their profiles and get away with it.

When trying to buy a tarantula online, your best bet is to go to the reputable companies that I mentioned in my resources link above. Not only do these companies have a track record for ethical treatment of these animals and great service, but many of them have good refund policies in case something goes wrong with shopping. If you buy a tarantula online, you want to make sure they have what is called a “LOA (Live On Arrival)” guarantee (or LAG, “Live Arrival/Animal Guarantee) – which means that if the tarantulas are dead when they arrive to you, you will either get your money back or be sent a replacement.

Here are some other important things to know before buying a tarantula online:

Choose the fastest shipping

Yes, this shipping will be expensive – but your tarantula seller may not offer the LOA guarantee if you choose slow shipping. Remember – these are live, fragile animals and shipping can be hard on them. They should go from the seller to their new home ASAP.

Do not buy in harsh weather

Try to plan your tarantula purchase around the best time of year for the seller (if in another area) and you. Very cold or hot weather can result in heating pack incidents or unnecessary deaths during the mailing process, as well as shipping delays in bad conditions. Try to purchase your tarantulas during a mild time of year to ensure that your Ts arrive to you safely and quickly.

And last but not least: When in doubt, ask around

If you’re unsure where or who to buy from, definitely pop into a tarantula FB group or a forum like arachnoboards or tarantulaforum. Your fellow T owners will be more than happy to give you advice and refer you to good sellers who won’t take advantage of you or sell unhealthy/unethically acquired tarantulas.

I hope you found that helpful!

I hope this helped you! By the way, check out my new tarantula magazine for more cool spider stuff:

I’m putting out issues every 2 months! If you’d like to be a part of that, you can visit the magazine’s Patreon page to subscribe or make a submission! You can also contact me at theavenmag@gmail.com for more info!

If you want to learn more about tarantulas, feel free to check out my big tarantula guide (I talk about lots of tarantula facts and enclosure/care tips). You can also get free tarantula tips by signing up for my newsletter or subscribing to my YouTube channel! I release new tips every Tuesday for Tarantula Tuesday! And I also sell some pretty cool tarantula t-shirts, if I do say so myself 😉