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I got VERY lucky at my local Petco. There is an employee there who has had tarantulas for over a decade and has owned dozens of species at many different ages. She is taking care of the tarantulas at the store because no one else wants to. They’ve had two (a Goliath and Brazilian black) for over two months and want to get rid of them because no one has shown interest and I befriended this employee and she’s going to be giving me a discount on the Brazilian black since she knows I’ve done my research and am passionate about inverts so I’m trying my first tarantula in just a week!!!

"If your down to one roll of toilet paper then you have failed as an adult"










Then my whole family fails ever 2 weeks

Im a simple man. I see the tarantula collective, i press like

Personal tip: Tarantulas are forgiving animals, if you're on a super tight budget but want a pet you can get a tarantula, as long as you have an enclosure and substrate you're good, pretty much anything that isn't paper can be used as a hide, don't feel pressured to have super exotic bioactive enclosures that others have, they have natural looking enclosures cause they can afford it, best diy hide I had was a ceramic tissue cover.
Another tip is communication: if you order a T make sure you tell the seller about whether you want freebies or not, don't want a surprise sling.

I love the way you nicely brought out the issue of “rescuing” a poorly kept T from pet stores. It can be very hard to resist when we see a T suffering, but like you put it- we may be rescuing one T but yet contributing to the problem unfortunately ☹️ My first T thatbgot me into the hobby was from a pet store, so I am grateful for that, but it was improperly kept and I was given less than ideal care instructions. I now buy all my T’s from highly reviewed and reputable dealers like Fear Not Tarantulas (my favorite) and net-bug.

...making enclosures and decorating them is like making a playground for tarantulas to play hide and seek with you and majority of the time, you're losing.

"...even take rude criticism online..." Love it. Good advice to realize that even negativity can be used for the better. 🙂

I just bought my first tarantula 😅and it was from a pet store ,I was there for my goldfish pebbles and ended up walking away with a Mexican red knee t ❤ I am sure it's a male . And yeah they had zero to little knowledge about it . I'm glad you do videos ,I am excited to learn 😊thank you

I just started at a pet store, and am here to learn what I can about tarantulas even though I am not a big fan of spiders, I'm learning Everything I can to make sure they are happy.
Thank you for the info

I work at a PetSmart and my store's district manager basically called me stupid when he said our pink toe needed at least 50% humidity and I said, actually humidity isn't that big of a deal. "Well PetSmart has hired veterinarians and people much smarter than me to come up with these rules so you need to add more bark to bring up the humidity" 🙄

This is gonna sound really weird, but your voice is super calming it makes me happy lol

I love how new the hobby is and how much more there is to always learn. Great advice here. Love it.

Unboxing day is better than any holiday!

I find myself looking for potential T enclosures and accessories every time I go to any store. It's amazing to me how much I adore spoders! I thought they were cool until I got my first one... They are unbelievably wonderful!!! I've become a better, more conscientious person because of my spider babies!

The T community is so united. It's all about the tarantulas. What an awesome family!!! 💗💗💗

I can't send my wife for feeders she comes back with a "rescue " half the time...just had a brachypelma hamorii escape a store bought sling enclosure thru a 1/16 inch gap between lid and side pretty bummed about it but will not same mistake twice...I'm making and modifying my own enclosures for the most part from now on...I find it fun and relaxing to build them and more rewarding...still fairly new to the hobby but picking up knowle
dge and experience quickly and your videos and comment section have been a great resource :_love:
Happy new year 🎉

I LITERALLY said that in the collective Facebook and I got ATTACKED and harassed!! The people there are horrible!! I said that “rescuing” the T’s only feeds into the cycle of abuse

That last part made me think of don't stop believing by Journey 😂

I sort of "fell into that trap" mentioned in the beginning, but it had a different outcome. I once saw a B. alboliposum for sale in a pet store, and they clearly didn't know anything about theraphosids. The spider sat all curled up in a tiny plastic container, without a hide, in strong light, on kittie litter, and with a cricket sitting on to of it. this spider was not well. So, I ended up taking pity on it, and bought it. Now, if I weren't confident I could rehabilitate this spider, I wouldn't have bought it, and I don't recommend anyone buying spiders from people who don't know what they're dealing with, but if you know what you're doing, it's a different story. Anyway, I got it home and fixed up a terrarium for it. Had I known I'd come home with a spider, I'd have a setup ready and decorated, but it was a spur of the moment decision to bring it home, all I wanted was just a ton of crickets. For about a year and a half, it never left its retreat, it just sat on the cork sheet making up the background, and I didn't even see it drink. I reckoned it was stressed out, so I just gave it some peace and quiet, and held off on the feeding, it was pretty well fed, and didn't spend any energy, so that wasn't a problem. I kept a close eye on humidity. When I bought it, it wasn't in visible pre-molt, but finally it molted, became a totally new spider, and started to eat and become more active (as active as couch potatoes are).

Now, before all this happened, I told the pet store a few things about what they should change in their spider setups, and they admitted they didn't really knew all that much about spiders, but they were happy for my input, and the next time I dropped by, they'd changed everything and given the various spiders terrariums and substate suitable for their nature, fixed the humidity and so on. Now, this is something you can do if you have the confidence that you know what you're talking about, but I can see how that's not possible for everyone, and especially not if you're new to the hobby.

Oh, and the spider was a female, I could verify that through the plastic container - generally, spiders need to have a certain size before you can sex them, as we all know, and most people doing this look at a molt, so did I, but on adult spiders the females tend to develop a small pot belly, and although not always easily visible, it can sometimes be used as a quick way to identify the sex. But again, you gotta have the experience. If I should give an advice, it would be "watch more videos like this", and don't forget to read the comments, there's already plenty of literature out there, and most of what I've read is pretty accurate compared to my own experiences, but as is also mentioned in the video, this is a hobby that's constantly evolving, so there's always a chance to learn something new someone just found out.

With that out of the way, thanks for a great video.:-)
Ps. never use reptile bark as substrate for any invertebrate, often it contains natural pesticides like cedar oil etc., it'll kill your spider right quick.

Omg I just bought my first tarantula yesterday. It is a blue cobalt tarantula I paid 160$ for just the tarantula. They didn’t even know the gender, and The tank was 70$ 🥲 I got played!! I love it so much though. Your videos are very informative and helpful! I was asking the people who worked there questions but it seemed like they didn’t really know anything. 😅 your videos are guiding me thank you!

2:28 People think they're stopping the sale of curtain species by buying them. It makes them money by you purchasing them.They're only going to replace it with another one .The only way to stop it is by law