Tarantulas are awesome and I'ma gonna get one imo.

I thinking either some sort of Brachypelma or maybe an avic ... maybe a Green bottle blue ... idk

thoughts?

... I really want to get a Cyclosternum Fasciatum but that's not really a beginner species imo .. but I'll get one some day imo

You stay the hell away from me.

I used to own a few. They are neat pets, although not very interactive. It is just too cool to watch them eat and build their house.

First of all I recommend http://www.arachnoboards.com. I felt it was the most informative spider (and other invert) keeping forum, and especially friendly towards beginners.

My most important advice is to keep your local climate in mind when picking a species. I used to live somewhere quite dry and I lost a few Avicularia spiderlings before I got the hang of just how humid to keep them without overdoing it. If you live somewhere where the climate is at least similar to their habitat I think they could be a reasonable beginner spider, but you also mention Brachypelma, which are very hardy but more of a desert spider. If you live somewhere dry get one of those.

I also had a Green Bottle Blue and although beginners are often discouraged from keeping them, I think this is mainly due to their temperment. As long as you don't want to handle the spider, the Green Bottle Blue is an interesting spider because it's fairly active and good fun to watch stalk its prey.

edit: If you get one of the more ill tempered spiders as a spiderling, I recommend as few habitat changes as possible. You can't keep them in too big of a container because of the risk of a fatal fall, but transfering fast moving, grumpy, medium or large spiders can be anxiety inducing. I recommend feeding before moving to distract and slowdown the tarantula.

I encourage you to buy a captive bred spiderling rather than an adult, and especially instead of a wild caught spider. I think dealing with wild caught specimens is somewhat irresponsible, especially for beginners, due to the obvious impact on the species. Raising a spiderling will provide more chances to watch it moult and you can be amazed at its growth, at the cost of not immediately having a terrifying killing machine. Another drawback with adults is not knowing how long they will live - if you get an adult or nearly adult male, it is already near the end of its life cycle.

I recommend surfing arachnoboards where you can get way better beginners advice, and to take the plunger. Spiders are interesting and relatively low maintenance pets.

What do you feed these things? Rats or something?

Usually crickets or cockroaches. Only the largest species can eat feeder mice.

**** that.

I just skimmed over this and at first thought it meant surfboards for spiders, which would be both awesome and terrifying.

GET 2 AND HAVE THEM FIGHT OMGG

ON SURFBOARDS IN A TINY WAVEPOOL OMFG

When beetles fight these battles
in a bottle with their paddles
and the bottle's on a poodle
and the poodle's eating noodles...

...they call this
a muddle puddle
tweetle poodle
beetle noodle
bottle paddle battle

http://www.youtube.com/user/tarantulaguy1976

good tarantula song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31mQruHW8Bg

this is the only page of that book that i have memorized and it's because john lithgow said it in 3rd rock from the sun.

on topic: post pictures of different kinds of tarantulas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah I've had an account on arachnoboards for a little over a year. It really is the nuts. Lol someone just posted something I was gonna bring up, RobC. His vids are AMAZING!!! Some of the coolest stuff I've seen on youtube.

I live in Oklahoma and it does get pretty humid, but probably not enough for just ambient humidity to be adequate for tropical species ... Not sure on that though.

I do like the avics but dunno about one of them being my first cause of the humidity requirements and the shooting poop doesn't sound too fun

Definitely gonna get captive bred but not sure if I'm gonna go all out and get a sling cause I want something that's gonna be easy to take care of and is gonna live to start off with. Not sure what kind of chances I would have of raising a sling into maturity imo.

I would post pics but I'm on my phone :/

What good is a billion eyes if you're just gonna walk off the edges of stuff and die all the time?

This thread creeps me out.

lol'd so ****ing hard at this for some reason.

I could probably look this up, but it also seems appropriate for this thread: do they eat dead or only living crickets/cockroaches? How often do you need to add food to the tank? Where do you store the food between feeds, or do you go to the store every time?

Same question about mice, but the crickets/cockroaches creep me out so much more, so I wanted to ask about them.

if there's one thing i've learned it's chicks dig tarantulas.

Never owned a tartantula (**** that) but I can't imagine they'd be be fed dead bugs.

Mostly you feed them live prey, but sometimes they will eat pre killed. I think really only slings (spiderlings) should be considered for pre killed prey cause they're smaller and more at risk of being injured or killed by the prey.

You can maintain your own colony of crickets or roaches but if u go that route, roaches are much more preferable cause crickets are louder and stink.

No real point in keeping mice to feed them as mice should only be fed to the largest species and then only rarely.

Not sure if this is a joke or not but there actually does seem to be a lot of chicks into the hobby.