Adult pet tarantulas typically eat one appropriately-sized prey item every 1-2 weeks, while young slings eat more often — around twice a week — since they're actively growing. Skip feeding entirely during pre-molt and for about a week after a molt.
Adult pet tarantulas typically eat one appropriately-sized prey item every one to two weeks. Young slings eat more often, around twice a week, since they’re actively growing.
How to Judge Portion Size
The prey item should be roughly the width of the tarantula’s body, or slightly smaller — oversized prey can stress or even injure a tarantula, especially a smaller one. If in doubt, go smaller and offer more often rather than bigger and less often.
Signs You’re Feeding the Right Amount
- A plump, rounded abdomen (not shriveled, not overly swollen).
- Prey is caught and eaten within a day, not left wandering the enclosure for days.
- Normal, steady growth over time between molts.
When to Skip a Feeding
Don’t feed a tarantula that’s showing pre-molt signs (a dark, bald patch on the abdomen, reduced activity, refusing food already) or for at least a week after a molt, until its new exoskeleton has hardened. Feeding during this window can injure the animal.
How Prey Size Should Change as Your Tarantula Grows
Slings need proportionally small prey — fruit flies or pinhead crickets for the smallest juveniles, scaling up gradually with each molt. Feeding oversized prey to a small sling isn’t just wasteful, it’s genuinely risky, since large, aggressive feeder insects can injure a small, vulnerable tarantula, especially one that isn’t actively hunting due to an approaching molt.
Understanding Your Individual Tarantula’s Appetite
Appetite varies noticeably between individual tarantulas, not just between species — some readily accept prey on a predictable schedule, while others of the same species and age are naturally more sporadic eaters. Tracking your specific animal’s pattern over a few months gives a far more useful baseline than applying a generic species-wide schedule rigidly.
What Happens If You Skip a Feeding
Missing a single scheduled feeding has essentially no negative effect on a healthy tarantula — they’re adapted to irregular food availability in the wild and tolerate gaps far better than most new keepers assume. This built-in tolerance is exactly why overfeeding out of worry is a more common and more harmful mistake than underfeeding.
Feeding Enrichment Beyond Just Prey Size
Some keepers vary prey type (rotating crickets, roaches, and occasional mealworms) partly for nutritional variety and partly because it mimics a more natural, varied wild diet — while not strictly necessary for a healthy tarantula, this variety can make prey acceptance more reliable in picky individual animals.
Age-Related Feeding Changes in Older Tarantulas
As tarantulas age, especially long-lived adult females, feeding frequency naturally tends to decrease further, sometimes to once every few weeks or longer between meals, alongside naturally slower metabolism and less frequent molting. This is a normal part of aging, not a sign of declining health, as long as body condition (a plump, not shriveled, abdomen) remains normal.
Adjusting Feeding After Relocation or Enclosure Changes
A tarantula moved to a new enclosure or relocated within the home may show a temporary feeding pause unrelated to molting — give a settling-in period of a week or two before treating a post-move feeding refusal as a concern separate from the normal pre-molt pattern.
Feeding Frequency Differences Between Species Groups
Fast-metabolism, more active species may naturally do well with slightly more frequent feeding than slow-metabolism, more sedentary species even at similar ages — general schedules are a reasonable starting point, but adjusting based on your specific species’ documented metabolism and your individual animal’s observed condition produces better long-term results than rigid adherence to a generic schedule.
Recordkeeping for Feeding Patterns
A simple log of feeding dates and outcomes (accepted, refused, molted since) makes it far easier to distinguish a normal pre-molt pause from a genuinely unusual feeding gap, especially valuable once you’ve had the animal long enough to have an established personal baseline to compare against.
Feeding Considerations When Rehoming or Adopting an Adult Tarantula
An adult tarantula adopted from a previous keeper may have an established feeding routine different from what general guidelines suggest — asking the previous owner about the animal’s specific recent feeding history, rather than starting fresh with generic advice, respects an established pattern the animal is already accustomed to.
Feeding and Enclosure Humidity Interaction
Live prey left too long in an enclosure with high humidity can affect substrate condition and contribute to mold risk beyond the direct stress to your tarantula — this is another reason to remove uneaten prey within a reasonable window rather than leaving it indefinitely “in case” the animal eats it later.
Understanding Prey Aggression Toward Your Tarantula
Some feeder insects, crickets especially, can bite or stress a tarantula that isn’t actively hunting, particularly during pre-molt — this is a real, underappreciated reason to remove uneaten prey promptly rather than assuming an uninterested tarantula is simply safe to leave with live prey indefinitely.
Feeding Behavior as an Early Health Indicator
A consistent, predictable feeding pattern for your specific tarantula is one of the most reliable everyday health indicators available to a keeper — which is exactly why establishing and tracking this baseline early matters, since a genuine deviation from an animal’s own established pattern is more meaningful than comparing against general species averages alone.
Adjusting Feeding Practices Based on Enclosure Observations
If you consistently find prey items still alive and unbothered well past a reasonable window, it’s worth reconsidering prey size, timing, or placement within the enclosure rather than assuming disinterest alone explains it — sometimes a simple adjustment (offering prey closer to a known resting spot, for instance) improves feeding response meaningfully.
Understanding Metabolic Differences Between Closely Related Species
Even within a similar general size and type, some species have documented faster or slower typical metabolisms than others — checking species-specific guidance rather than assuming all “similar-looking” tarantulas share identical feeding needs avoids both overfeeding a slow-metabolism species and underfeeding a faster one.
Feeding Considerations During Extended Fasting Periods
Some adult tarantulas, particularly certain long-lived females, occasionally enter extended fasting periods lasting several months with no apparent molt or illness cause — this is documented normal behavior in some species and individuals, though it’s worth confirming your specific species is known for this pattern rather than assuming it applies universally before dismissing an unusually long fast as automatically fine.
Working With a Consistently Picky Eater
A tarantula that regularly refuses certain prey types but readily accepts others isn’t unusual — some individual animals show genuine prey preferences, and working with this preference (offering the accepted prey type more often) is more practical than repeatedly trying to force acceptance of a rejected prey type.
Final Word on Feeding Confidence
Most feeding uncertainty resolves with time and direct observation of your specific animal — trust the general guidelines as a starting framework, but let your own tarantula’s established pattern become your primary guide once you’ve had it long enough to know that pattern well.
A Practical Feeding Log Template
A simple three-column log — date, prey offered, outcome (eaten/refused/molted since) — captures everything genuinely useful for spotting your tarantula’s real pattern over time, without needing a complicated tracking system that becomes a chore to maintain consistently.
Feeding Frequency by Tarantula Growth Stage
Feeding frequency for pet tarantulas isn’t a single fixed number — it changes substantially across the animal’s growth stages, and applying an adult feeding schedule to a fast-growing juvenile (or vice versa) is one of the more common care mistakes. Spiderlings and young juveniles have high metabolic demands relative to their size and benefit from more frequent small meals, often twice a week, appropriately sized to roughly the width of the animal’s own abdomen to avoid overwhelming a small digestive system or leaving uneaten prey in the enclosure too long.
As tarantulas mature into sub-adults and adults, their metabolism slows considerably and feeding frequency should drop accordingly — many adult tarantulas thrive on just one appropriately-sized meal every one to two weeks, and some species, particularly larger, slower-growing ones, do fine with even less frequent feeding. Overfeeding an adult on a juvenile schedule doesn’t just waste feeder insects, it can lead to a dangerously obese abdomen that increases rupture risk from a fall, so scaling frequency down as growth slows is a genuine health consideration rather than just a cost-saving adjustment.
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FAQ
Adult tarantulas typically eat well on one appropriately-sized prey item every one to two weeks, while young slings — still actively growing — do better with feeding around twice a week.
Overfeeding usually shows up as uneaten prey wandering the enclosure (which stresses the tarantula and can attract mites) or an unusually swollen abdomen — cutting back to a longer gap between feedings is the fix.
A consistently rounded or shiny abdomen suggests it's regularly overfed — tarantulas store fat reserves and can go extended periods between meals naturally.
