Tarantula feeding is one of the things I get asked about an awful lot. Even with some experience under your belt, a new species or deciding to parent a spider of an age or size you’re unfamiliar with can cause you to feel lost when it comes to tarantula feeding and care.

There are many different variables to consider when thinking about your tarantula’s feeding schedule such as their species, what time of year it is, their size, and their age. Finding the right schedule and the right amount of food can be something that stresses many tarantula owners out. So in this post I’ll try to break things down in a way that’s easy to understand.

Species

Knowing what is “normal” tarantula feeding behavior for your particular spider is important because this can be very helpful in easing your fears. Knowing that you have a tarantula of a species that generally has a hearty appetite and is an aggressive eater and fast grower will dictate a lot about how your tarantula feeding schedule looks and transforms as they put on size. This is also incredibly important if you have a fussy tarantula like my grammostola rosea, Spidey. Spidey’s species is infamous for refusing food randomly even when they’re not in premolt – so being aware that this is normal for the species can help you know how often to try feeding or when to back off. It’ll also save you a lot of stress – I worried for MONTHS the first time Spidey fasted, until I learned to accept her weird fasting patterns. Now I am much more relaxed when she refuses food and I just try to offer her something every few weeks. Whether she eats or not is up to her, and if she doesn’t eat I’ll just try again later in the month.

Seasonal changes

Regardless of what species you have, your summer and winter tarantula feeding schedule is probably going to look a bit different from each other. My Spidey really slows down her feeding response in the winter, as many tarantulas do. When they sense the seasons changing and their environment getting a little colder, a tarantula’s metabolism will slow down, as will their appetite. It’s not uncommon for tarantula to go into a “hibernation” phase and become pretty inactive and dormant. Keeping your tarantula’s environment warm and temperature controlled can help with this, however it may be unavoidable. Some tarantulas just sense the seasonal change and they become incredibly boring for a few months lol. Spidey is the queen of this! And Blinky, my little Arizona blonde sling who is usually a very excited eater, has decided to live underground until spring lol. Haven’t seen that little baby in weeks! So be aware that your spider may react to the weather.

Size and age

The size and age of your spider will also greatly affect any tarantula feeding schedule you try to come up with. Slings generally eat much more frequently than adults. While you might only feed an older spider once per week or less, a sling can eat 2-3x per week (just be careful because they molt more often, too). Elderly spiders like Spidey can eat far less than 1x per week, in fact sometimes she is fine with being feed once every 2-3 weeks. It really just depends on the metabolism and growth rate of the spider. Size will also play a role in this as well – a larger spider can likely be feed more often. Big spiders such as goliath birdeaters (theraphosa blondi) can likely eat 2x per week even as adults.

Type of food and quantity

What you feed your tarantulas will also affect their appetite as different bugs provide different nutrition for tarantulas. For example, bugs like cockroaches and crickets are generally filled with protein and provide decent nutrition. Superworms and other worms, on the other hand, are quite fatty. I am not sure of the exact science behind this, but I do believe that feeding your tarantulas fatty food can impact their appetite. For years I was feeding Spidey superworms because she was too slow for crickets and I didn’t have a local place to get roaches from. On this diet of super worms she would go on incredibly long fasting sprees and I would only be able to feed her a few times per year. Earlier this year I discovered a local exotic shop Ill Exotics, where I could buy cockroaches. I decided to try getting Spidey onto cockroaches because someone on her Tumblr blog had suggested that it might regulate her appetite because worms were very fatty. I think this person was right. Since Spidey has been on strictly roaches since earlier this year, she has been on the most regular eating streak she has ever been on, continuing to accept food every 2-3 weeks without any fasting. As Spidey was infamous for fasting for over a year at a time even when not in premolt, I don’t think that was a coincidence. So that’s something to definitely keep in mind when creating a tarantula feeding schedule. I think you can definitely do worms as a little treat occasionally, but I would not recommend them as the primary part of a tarantula’s diet. I would say the same thing about pinky mice – I actually don’t think pinky mice should ever be feed to tarantulas (here’s why) but once in a while probably isn’t too bad. It seems that feeding tarantulas items that have a lot of fat can mess with their appetites.

The other thing to consider is how much you want to feed your tarantula at any given time, and this has a lot to do with size. Big tarantulas can eat two or three bugs at a time. As long as the prey is smaller than their thorax, there’s no harm in throwing in an extra bug or two to see if they’ll go after another – just be sure to remove the prey if they’re not interested.

Watch and learn

Above all, what is most going to dictate a tarantula feeding schedule is… your tarantula. Species, size, age, and food aside, every tarantula is different. Some tarantulas are going to be weird like Spidey and give you a run for your money. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve ended up with pet roaches or worms because of this old girl. Some tarantulas are going to be very hungry babies and great eaters. Some are going to be very greedy and want to eat several bugs at a time (this is popular with the big ones!).

The best way you can figure out a tarantula feeding schedule is by observing. By playing close attention to your spider and experimenting, you will be able to gauge your tarantula’s feeding patterns with time. If you are trying to feed your T twice per week but they are only hungry and taking prey down the first time, you can feed them less. If they are viciously lunging at their food and taking down an extra one if you put something else in, you might try feeding them more or a bigger bug. It is ok to take time to figure this out – tarantulas are incredibly hardy and your tarantula will be fine if you forget a feeding or underestimate things a little at first. Another good tip is to go searching in forums such as Arachnoboards or Tarantulaforums to see how others feed their tarantulas of similar age and size.

Overfeeding

A lot of tarantula owners are afraid of overfeeding their tarantulas when they create a tarantula feeding schedule. While we don’t want to have really fat spiders because this makes them more fragile and prone to injury, I think it’s quite hard to overfeed a tarantula. Feeding slings more often isn’t much of an issue because they grow and molt so fast and frequently, and many T owners opt to feed them a lot so they get out of their fragile sling phase faster. Feeding in this way isn’t necessary when your tarantula is out of the sling phase, though – you can resume a slower schedule once your tarantula is in the juvenile phase. Generally, while I believe some tarantulas are just greedy, I think most will stop eating once they’re full. So they basically prevent your from overfeeding them. However, in the event that you have a greedy tarantula that is starting to look quite plump in their abdomen (and they’re not in premolt), you can simply cut back on the food and they’ll eventually slim down. Easy fix!

Document it

Many tarantula owners – especially the ones that have a big collection – keep records of when and how much they have fed their tarantulas, as well as when their tarantulas last molted. This is a great tip in order to keep your tarantula feeding schedule organized and on track.

I hope this was helpful! How do you create your tarantula feeding schedule? If you’d like to learn more about tarantula care, please check out my full tarantula care guide!