As you may know, I recently got Spidey a baby sister/brother and acquired a captive bred Arizona blonde (Aphonopelma chalcodes) sling from Ill Exotics! And now that I’m raising my first sling, I’m finally going to focus on a question I get a lot: How to feed a baby tarantula?

From what I’ve been learning so far, there are some similarities but also some big differences. Appetite wise, my sling Blinky could not be farther from my Grammostola rosea (chilean rose hair) Spidey. Spidey is well into her adult years (she’s practically a grandmother!) and fasts for much of her life. She can regularly go months without eating anything and is perfectly fine. Even when she does eat, she is a total slowpoke and usually plays with her food before doing anything about it! Blinky couldn’t be more different, this little baby is a hunter and pounces on its food without hesitation!

So what am I learning about how to feed a baby tarantula?

Well, first of all, the size is an issue. You should not give slings food that is too big for them. While giving any tarantula food that is the wrong size will be an issue, baby tarantulas are especially vulnerable and fragile. You can feed a baby tarantula little pinhead crickets, or roaches, worms but they should preferably be smaller than the spider. While some tarantulas may prefer to hunt live prey, some extremely tiny slings can successfully eat pre-killed or pieces of prey.

The frequency is also very different from a grown tarantula like Spidey. While older tarantulas can get away with being fed once per week (or much less), younger tarantulas grow very quickly and need to be fed way more often! Many tarantula owners actually choose to feed them as much as possible to get them out of this fragile sling stage, because many baby tarantulas don’t make it due to their fragility.

One big thing to note about how to feed a baby tarantula is that just as they eat for frequently, they also molt more frequently. This means that you may not have much warning before a molt and you must be very careful not to leave uneaten prey in a sling’s enclosure for extended periods of time, in case your baby tarantula goes into a molt. A molt leaves slings very vulnerable and open to an attack, and prey items like crickets are notorious for munching on anything they can get access to.

Here are some feeding videos you may find useful:

If you want to learn more about tarantulas, feel free to check out my big tarantula guide (I talk tons about slings and other tarantula care topics). 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 😉

By the way, I am in the middle of creating a monthly tarantula magazine – 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!

Featured image via Tarantula Heaven