I love getting questions from new tarantula owners who are just starting out on their journey as well as those who are thinking about getting into the hobby – they tend to ask the best tarantula questions! Most of the time, it’s usually questions about how to make sure their tarantula is comfortable, healthy, and reassurance that they aren’t doing anything wrong. Basically, these newbies want to make sure they’re going to be the best tarantula owner possible – and I love that! But despite all the advice I give about tarantula care and behavior, if I could just give one little tip (that’s actually a major tip), it would be a message to new and experienced owners alike. It would be this:

What’s the #1 thing you can do to become the best tarantula owner?

Accept that you will never be the best tarantula owner. That’s right. Let me explain.

Being able to accept that you must always be open to new ideas, methods, and information in this hobby is important. You never just “arrive” at a specific point in time in your tarantula keeping where there’s nothing more to learn. This hobby, despite its growing popularity, is still new. There is very little scientific research about these animals, and new care techniques and requirements are always being discovered.

I think about the tarantula owners that I look up to for information – very experienced keepers such as Richard Stewart of The Tarantula Collective and Tom Moran of Tom’s Big Spiders. The thing they have in common is they are always learning. Richard himself, in an interview in my tarantula magazine, spoke about this exact thing when he spoke about getting his first tarantula over a decade ago. He said:

“The internet wasn’t nearly what it was today and I was not someone that enjoyed getting online other than to play Starcraft or illegally download music. So I kept that poor girl in an enclosure with not enough substrate and a sponge in her water dish for nearly a little research online about her when I came home one day and saw that she had molted.”

Many tarantula keepers who have read The Tarantula Keeper’s Guide – which is the first and only mainstream tarantula guide – have stated that many of its practices have now been disproven, are outdated, or no longer apply. That’s what actually inspired ME to write and create my own tarantula guide, however I know that over time even I will need to update this guide as we learn more about tarantulas.

The point I am trying to make is that the journey never ends. Especially in such a new, growing hobby. And the best thing you can do for yourself and your tarantulas is to commit to growing and knowing that there will always be things you don’t know. One of the most common things that I see in tarantula groups is people fighting about who knows more or who is more experienced and I think in those instances we are really missing opportunities to learn from each other’s experience.

When we are closed off and think we know everything, we stop learning and pass up what could be very interesting viewpoints or important advice. So I advocate for tarantula owners working toward being the best tarantula owners they can be in the moment they are in, but accepting that there will always be a way that they can grow and that they should never get fully comfortable in this hobby. Being hungry to learn more and adapt when needed are the bread and butter of any great performer, athlete, you name it. And it’s true for pet owners as well.

I hope this was useful to you! Keep learning from one another and be willing to adapt when new information comes along! And if you’re interested in learning more about tarantula care, please check out my tarantula guide!