The story behind Spidey and the elusive dubia cockroach

If you follow Spidey’s tumblr blog, you’ll know that she recently reached an important milestone in her spider life – her first dubia cockroach! Now some of you who are first-timers here might think “what’s the big deal?” Well, I’ll tell you!

I’ve had Spidey, my elderly G. rosea, for quite some time – probably over 7 years by now! And in that time, she has not only fasted for like 80% of it (she has only molted 3 times in my care), but she refused to eat anything but superworms!

The journey to the dubia cockroach

When I first got Spidey, I tried to feed her crickets because I felt they’d be most nutritious for her and because I’d seen crickets in her enclosure when I bought her. However, I soon realized this wouldn’t be a great option for her after witnessing, week after week, Spidey failing to catch her prey. At one point, I really started to feel bad for her and thought her spider skills might be broken!

I didn’t know what to do, but watching her continue failing and seeing those crickets jumping all over her tank and bothering her wasn’t making me feel too great about it. So, I decided to try a much slower food – superworms. This worked out great for Spidey, actually – by giving her worms, I was able to see that she would much rather feel around on the ground for her food than pounce on it. We seemed to have figured out something that would work for her, but I was still curious about how her diet could be optimized as she was going through some extremely long fasting periods that were not related to molting and would also get quite round.

I started to research the nutritional content of feeders and realized that nutritionally, super worms were pretty fatty compared to crickets or roaches (I have a whole post about tarantula diet and nutrition here). One tarantula keeper even stated that switching her to a diet lower in fat might even regulate her appetite, which I was hopeful for.

Once my local exotic pet shop Ill Exotics opened up, I had no more excuses not to try to get Spidey on dubia roaches. I bought one for her, and… she absolutely hated it. Not only did she not want to eat it, but she attempted to strike at it out of annoyance (the poor bug was smart enough to roll on its back and play dead). Spidey was NOT happy and clung to her log for the rest of the day to comfort herself lol. Future attempts were not successful either, and Spidey went back to superworms.

So, I had a pet dubia roach for almost six months because Spidey wouldn’t eat it. I eventually wanted to get rid of the roach, so last month I decided to try one last time before trying to find a good way to dispose of it. It took a good 30 minutes for Spidey to figure out what was going on (and the roach was smart – it barely moved) but Spidey FINALLY crunched down on the roach! There were definitely times where I thought this wouldn’t happen, especially when she stood on the roach for a good 12 minutes, but it was successful and she ate the whole thing! Watch this glorious moment below:

Now that I know Spidey will eat dubia roaches, I’m really excited about adding these to her meal plan. I personally hate superworms – I think they are smelly, gross, and very dirty so I’m looking forward to giving Spidey feeders that will be less messy and overall easier for me to handle. I am also excited to see if getting Spidey on a routine of less fatty feeders will create any positive changes in her appetite or fasting cycles. I will keep you all updated on our progress!

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 😉