Tarantulas of the World

The Socotra Island Blue Baboon Tarantula is a species native to the Socotra Island in the Indian ocean. It is very much loved in the hobby due to its beautiful colors which include a light metallic blue carapace with darker blue legs it also has a beige to dark brown abdomen and femur with its spinnerets being light to dark brown. Females tend to grow bigger then males reaching a size of 5 to 6 inches in length and can reach maturity after just 2 years. Their lifespan are rather short compared to other species of tarantulas.

Habitat:

This tarantula is terrestrial and a great burrower. It is a bountiful webber and will thoroughly web its enclosure. With all of this in mind your enclosure should contain at least 6 inches of substrate and should have more length and width as it would have height. Provide just enough height for your tarantula to flip so that it can molt. This tarantula likes a dry environment and you should let its substrate (we recommend some sort of coconut fiber and vermiculite mix) be dry but moist enough to allow him to create a burrow. Overfilling its water dish with clean water should keep the humidity where it needs to be as this species does not require high levels of it. A steady temperature of 73 to 81 degrees should be kept and should be enough to keep your tarantula happy. We recommend a starter hide or retreat be added to the enclosure until your tarantula created its own burrow. This tarantula has been known to be communal though females tend to cannibalize males. We recommend you keep your tarantula by itself in an enclosure unless you are breeding him/her.

Feeding:

The Socotra Island Blue Baboon Tarantula tarantula is a great eater and a steady diet of crickets, cockroaches, locusts and even meal worms. Though they can eat small rodents such as mice and or lizards we recommend you just keep feeding them insects as there is speculation that an over amount of small rodents can potentially increase a calcium buildup in your tarantula causing them to get a bad molt.

Attitude:

Surprisingly this tarantula is not as aggressive as its other old world counterparts or even its fellow baboon tarantulas. The Blue Baboon is rather shy and sometimes skittish and would rather retreat then try to attack this does not mean that we would recommend you handling them. They are still defensive as they do not come equipped with urticating hairs and chances are will bite should they feel threatened. We recommend extreme caution while handling.

The Socotra Island Blue Baboon Tarantula is most definitely a beautiful species that would be great for the more experienced of hobbyist. It is a great tarantula for any old world collection and would be great as your first Baboon tarantula.

Do you have a Socotra Island Blue Baboon? Tell us about it and comment down below!

How to set up your own feeder roach colony! As your collection of Tarantulas gets bigger and bigger you will notice that the need for feeding them does as well. Most of you end up purchasing large quantities of crickets as those are always readily available at any time at your local pet store. Crickets do not live long and it is a pain and heavy maintenance to keep them alive as you can imagine a small group of 5 grown tarantulas alone can end up taking you trips to the pet store weekly to buy more and more crickets! Your easier alternative is a simple feeder roach colony! Some of you might be thinking eew cockroaches! But in reality roaches will end up benefiting you a lot more in the long run then crickets every will!

As acknowledged by the A1 Bed Bug Exterminator | Charlotte North Carolina, your crickets will either: die easily, smell bad, create unwanted noise, jump and if they escape become hard to catch at times, chew through clothes and plastic and more importantly will not stand still for you to grab and give to your tarantula. All of this can make feeding your tarantula unpleasant at times.

Your cockroach however: are big in size and produce a more nutrient filled diet for your tarantula, do not produce much of a smell unless you stick your head directly into their enclosure, do not make noise, dont fly, cannot climb on smooth plastic or glass, are slow moving and can easily be picked up and given to your tarantula and most importantly live longer and are so much easier to breed.

So what do you need to get this colony started?

• Plastic bin with a lid that preferably clips shut
• Egg cartons, toilet paper rolls and or paper towel rolls
• Heating pad (optional)
• Roach food (such as vegetables, fruits, stale cereal, store bought cockroach food)
• water dish with water crystals

In this tutorial I used a 50 gallon clear plastic bin that I purchased at Target for $10. Now the only “labor intensive” part of this job which is how I ended up doing this and it seems to be working well is simply drilling small holes at the top of the lid and on the top sides shown in the pictures below.

As you can see very simply and standard. As for what is really needed in the bin you will need just your egg cartons, paper towel rolls and or toilet paper rolls. Position them nicely in a way that your roaches will have something to hide under as they love darkness. Make sure in the center of it all you will have enough space to add their food source and a water dish, I personally use water crystals as they have been working well for me but if you see just normal water does the trick for you then you can stick to that. As for food source I typically keep my cockroaches (in this case B.dubia roaches) on a steady nutritious diet of leafy greens carrots and on occasion a piece of fruit. Reasons why I normally stay away from fruits is that if left in there for too long it will surely be a source of mold which can easily kill your colony. Cockroaches are not picky with food and eat vegetables just fine. As you will see below you can set up the bin however is best for you.

As you can see at this point your bin is ready to be filled with B.dubia roaches. You can keep stacking up more and more egg cartons and paper towel rolls as you place more roaches in. You can buy a starter roach colony online for about $15 dollars. Within weeks you should have a healthy roach colony that will keep reproducing. What I like doing is buying two colony starters one from one company and one for another company to make sure they are different breeding families.

My roach colony is in a specific dark room where the temperature is high for my tarantulas, if that is not the case for you, you can add a heating source such as a heating pad but be cautious and make sure that your plastic bin is heat resistant to prevent a fire.

These simple steps will easily help you with your own roach feeder colony. It will end up saving you time by not making trips to keep purchasing crickets and in the long run will save you quite a bit of money. As always if you need help ask away, we will be more then happy to guide you with your roach colony 🙂

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The Fringed Ornamental Tarantula is an Old World species native of the Sri Lanka forests. It is a very large arboreal tarantula with full grown adults reaching a length of 10+ inches. It is considered one of the largest of pokies. Poecilotheria comes from the Greek word poikilos which means spotted, therion which means wild beast and ornata which means adorned.

Habitat:

The Fringed Ornamental is an arboreal species that spends most of its time up in trees and plants in the wild. Your enclosure should be about 10 gallons in size and needs to have more height then width. Substrate should be very damp to produce enough humidity for this species. Humidity levels should be anywhere from 75 to 85 percent and temperatures should be about 78 to 83 degrees. A long piece of bark should be added to provide your pokie a hide and something for it to climb on. A clean water dish should also always be available at all times. Due to high humidity levels in the enclosure be sure to keep a close look out for mold or fungus as this can be common in the enclosure. Should you see any, waste no time in providing enough maintenance to clean up the enclosure.

Feeding:

A steady diet of crickets and large b.dubia cockroaches should be fine for this tarantula. They are insectivores and have been known to eat locusts, moths and other types of insects. Feeding should be kept at once a week and should not be an issue as these guys are great eaters.

Attitude:

Pokies are very defensive and from experience this one might just be the most aggressive out of all of them. Your Fringed Ornamental is very defensive and are known to strike fast. They do produce one of the worst venom of all tarantulas with victims experiencing immense pain, muscle cramps, fever like symptoms, vomiting, blurry eyes and even shortness of breath. Even though the toxins in its venom are not lethal it can still easily induce a quick trip to the E.R. We do not recommend the handling of this species at all, not even by the most experienced of hobbyists.

Do not let the Fringed Ornamental Tarantula’s aggressiveness of this species scare you, it is a great tarantula and a must have for any experienced keeper’s collection. Do you have a P. ornata? Tell us your story and comment down below!