The Tarantula Collective

06/18/2026

Mystery boxes are always a gamble.

Sometimes you get exactly what you hoped for. Sometimes you get fast tarantulas, new species, and a centipede that immediately reminds you centipedes were designed by nature during a bad mood.

Ty Dye Exotics sent me another mystery box, and this one had some seriously cool spiders and inverts in it.

If you like unboxings, new species, and watching me make calm decisions while holding a container full of bad ideas, this one is worth watching.

Watch here:

For the 3rd year in a row Ty Dye Exotics has sent me a mystery box ...

06/18/2026

A manicou photographed at night here in Martinique.

This is the common opossum, Didelphis marsupialis, called “manicou” or “manikou” here on the island. And no, this isnt a rat, it's a marsupial.

We found this one while we were back in the jungle at night looking for Caribena versicolor and checking the same area where we had found Acanthoscurria maga earlier in the week. We just stumbled across them as we were hiking out.

Manicous are mostly nocturnal, and they move through the trees and low vegetation looking for food. They’re opportunistic omnivores, eating things like fruit, insects, other invertebrates, small animals, eggs, carrion, and whatever else they can safely get away with.

They spend the day hidden away in shelter, then come out after dark to forage. Seeing one moving through the branches while we were photographing spiders was a nice reminder that these tarantulas are only one piece of the larger nighttime ecosystem.

Photos taken in Martinique.

06/18/2026

Every winter, new tarantula keepers start to panic.

The house drops into the high 60s, someone on the internet says “they need heat,” and suddenly there is a heat lamp, a heating pad, a space heater, and a very dry enclosure involved. Which is usually where the real danger starts.

Mild cooling is not usually what kills tarantulas in winter. Bad heat advice does.

So when is extra heat actually needed? Why are heating pads and lamps so risky? And what should you do if your spider room gets cooler than usual?

I wrote this article because “keep them warm” sounds helpful, but done the wrong way, it can dry out an enclosure, create dangerous hot spots, and cause way more harm than a cool room ever would.

Read it here:

Worried your tarantula is too cold in winter? Here’s why mild cool temperatures are usually safer than heat lamps, heat pads, and overheating your tarantula enclosure.

06/17/2026

Some tarantula advice sounds smart until you actually think about what the animal needs.

This video is about five ideas keepers repeat all the time that can cause more problems than they solve.

Most bad husbandry starts with good intentions and bad information.

Watch here:

They say wisdom is where knowledge and experience combine. Sometimes what we initially think are our most brilliant ideas turns out to be some of our worst. ...

06/17/2026

Acanthoscurria maga photographed in Martinique.

And before anyone makes the name weird, this species was described by Eugène Simon in 1892. So no, the “maga” in Acanthoscurria maga has absolutely nothing to do with American politics. The spider had the name long before the internet got a chance to ruin another word.

This is one of the large ground-dwelling tarantulas of the Lesser Antilles, currently known from St. Lucia, Dominica, and Martinique.

The first male we found was in the same hot, humid forest where we were finding Caribena versicolor. The next day, we checked iNaturalist records and went to a much drier part of the island. That site was all dry leaf litter, exposed soil, roots, burrows, rocks, and tarantulas hiding from the heat of the day.

There we found males and females in or near their burrows. The females had a more solid brown, burnt orange look, blending almost perfectly into the dry leaves and soil around them.

A few nights later, we went back to the original forest site. That is when Matt from The Spider Room found an incredible female about a foot from where we had found the male earlier in the trip. It is the same species, but darker, higher contrast, and looks like a completelydifferentspecies of tarantula.

That is why color alone is a bad way to identify tarantulas. The papers separate this species by morphology, not by whether one spider looks brown, black, dusty, freshly molted, or well hydrated by rainforest humidity.

While C. versicolor was using leaves, trunks, and the vertical layers of the forest, A. maga was working the ground layer: burrows, soil, roots, leaf litter, and shaded pockets under the surface.

Same island. Same forests. Completely different strategies.

Photographed, observed, and left exactly where we found them. As always.

06/17/2026

Humidity might be the most overthought topic in the tarantula hobby.

New keepers get told to keep a species at 70%, 75%, 80%, 85%, and before long they are misting, panicking, buying three different gauges, and wondering if their spider is silently judging them from inside a cork bark tube.

But are exact humidity percentages really the goal? Or should we be thinking more about substrate, ventilation, water access, moisture gradients, and the actual microhabitat the tarantula is using?

I wrote this article because “keep it humid” can be helpful advice, but it can also be incomplete, confusing, and sometimes dangerous when people chase numbers instead of paying attention to the enclosure.

Read it here:

Tarantula humidity is one of the most overcomplicated topics in the hobby. Here’s why exact percentages and cheap hygrometers matter less than substrate, ventilation, water, and moisture gradients.

06/16/2026

Not all tarantula substrate is just dirt.

In this video, I take a closer look at Royal Soil, a bioactive substrate designed to support the tiny cleanup crew living inside an enclosure.

Springtails, isopods, bacteria, fungi, and all the little things we usually ignore are what help break down waste and keep a bioactive setup functioning.

This isn’t something every tarantula keeper needs, but if you’re interested in bioactive enclosures, substrate matters more than most people realize.

Watch here:

Substrate isn’t just dirt. It’s the foundation of the enclosure.In this video, I take a closer look at Royal Soil, a premium bioactive substrate from Juice’s...

06/16/2026

Just a reminder that the Tarantula Collective Spring 2026 Collection is almost gone!

At midnight on June 20th, the entire Spring Collection will be retired, including exclusive items that won't be available once the collection ends.

If you've had your eye on any of the spring designs, now is the time to grab them. And to make it a little easier, you can save **20% off your order** with code SPRING20

Whether it's a shirt, hat, water bottle, sticker, or something else you've been considering, don't wait too long—once the collection closes, these items will no longer be available.

Shop the Spring 2026 Collection now:
https://the-tarantula-collective-shop.fourthwall.com/collections/spring-collection

Use code SPRING20 at checkout and save 20% before it's gone!

06/16/2026

How big should a tarantula enclosure be?

That sounds simple until you ask ten keepers and accidentally start a small zoning dispute in the comments.

Most of us have heard the old “3 to 4 times the spider’s leg span” rule, and it is not useless. It is a decent starting point. But it is also mostly telling you the minimum safe size, not necessarily what makes the most functional setup.

Should a terrestrial tarantula have room to move around? How much height is too much? Does a fossorial species need floor space, depth, or both? And at what point does a bigger enclosure stop being better and start making basic maintenance harder?

I wrote this one because enclosure size should not just be about fitting the spider in a box without disaster. It should be about giving them the structure, security, and options they need to behave like the animal they actually are.

Read it here:

How big should a tarantula enclosure be? Here’s why the common 3-to-4-times leg span rule is a good minimum, but not always the best setup if you want natural behavior and a more functional enclosure.

06/16/2026

Adult Caribena versicolor's photographed here in Martinique.

After finding spiderlings tucked into curled leaves near the ground and juveniles sitting on broad leaves just off the trail, seeing the adults really helped put the whole picture together.

These spiders don’t seem to use the forest the same way at every stage of life.

The smallest ones we found were down in the low vegetation, using leaves to make little silk-lined shelters. Juveniles were still fairly close to the forest floor, often sitting out on broad leaves in a classic ambush posture, tucked into holes in fence posts or hanging out on the bark at the base of larger trees. The adults were a different story. 

Some were right around eye level or just above it, which made photography a little easier. Others were 20, 30, even over 40 feet up in the trees, which mostly involved pointing flashlights into the canopy hoping my camera will be able to capture an image.

When we think about “arboreal” tarantulas we shouldn't limit it to just height. It’s bark texture, anchor points, shade, airflow, humidity, retreats, and access to different layers of the forest as the spider grows.

We also saw one adult eating a small tree frog, so at least in nature, appropriately sized vertebrate prey can be on the menu. That doesn’t mean they specialize in frogs or you should attempt to feed your captive versicolor amphibians, but it does show a much bigger predator-prey system than we typically consider in captivity.

The colors on these spiders in the wild really do look better out here, or maybe seeing them on actual Martinique trees, in actual Martinique humidity, with actual rainforest all around them just makes the whole thing hit differently.

Either way, this animal I’ve kept and photographed for years has suddenly felt new again.

As always, these spiders were photographed, observed, and left exactly where we found them. No collecting. No removing animals from the wild. Just documentation, appreciation, and a better understanding of what these animals are actually doing in nature.

Photos taken in situ in Martinique.