Pets

Pet garden spiders are great beginner spiders, considering their small size and easy maintenance. Pet garden spiders also do not need much in terms of a pet spider habitat, and are extremely interesting to watch. They are a great way to introduce your kids to keeping spiders as pets, as pet garden spiders are quite docile and are completely harmless.

Like most spiders, female garden spiders are larger than male garden spiders, reaching sizes up to 1 to 2 inches in size, while males are maximum 1 inch long. Pet garden spiders will be most active during the night, and you will need to keep them in a suitable pet spider habitat; a 5-10 gallon fish tank is ideal. This habitat can have normal soil as substrate, though be sure to cleanse the soil before you introduce it into the habitat. Décor can include twigs and branches, as well as rocks, as these spiders make expansive webs.

Since most varieties of garden spiders weave webs, the branches and twigs are an important part of the pet spider habitat. Regarding food, pet garden spiders eat small insects, ideally smaller than themselves. You need to make sure the insects you feed the spider have not been treated with pesticides, and are well-fed. Insects like crickets also eat spiders, so a hungry cricket just might make a meal of your pet garden spider, instead of the other way around.

You do not have to keep any separate water provisions for your pet garden spider, as they make up for their water needs through their food itself. These low maintenance spiders do not need too much care, and their tank only needs to be cleaned once in a month or maybe even in two months. While cleaning you need to be careful to not let the spider escape. The best way to avoid that is to use a fish net; you can scoop up the spider and place it in a temporary container, while you clean the tank.

One point you need to keep in mind is that you need to ensure that the temperature in the pet spider habitat does not drop below 60 degrees, as this is unsuitable for pet garden spiders. These interesting spiders are a treat to observe, with one particular feature being their practice of placing themselves in the center of the web and oscillating its web vigorously. This is done to entangle its prey in the web completely. These are just a few of the characteristics that make garden spiders great pets, so don’t wait any longer and go  get yourself a pet garden spider.