If you’re a tarantula owner, I’m going to assume that one of the things you fret the most about is trying to make your tarantulas’ enclosures as beautiful, cozy, and exciting as possible for your spiders. From being in tarantula Facebook groups myself, I am constantly in awe of the efforts put forth by tarantula owners, for pets that probably can’t even see the beauty that they live in! As part of this homemaking activity, many of us really want to and try to replicate an environment that is as close to the spiders’ natural habitat or nature as possible – but there are a few things we need to look out for in doing so. I want to take about one of them today – plants!

For the most part, I’m against live plants in an enclosure except for in one circumstance which I will mention at the end. Before I get there, let me tell you why I personally prefer fake plants over live ones and believe they’re more safe.

One is a practical reason, but tank cleanings are much easier with fake plants. I would not want to ruin a plant’s life every time I had to clean my tarantulas’ tanks. And fake plants are usually pretty cheap and easy to replace if your tarantula does something gross like poop on them!

Another practical reason is that many tarantulas won’t need the moisture in the tank that a live plant will require to sustain its life. For a lot of tarantulas, a live plant will add moisture that will make them very upset! Spidey, my G. rosea, has a fit every time her substrate gets a little damp. Also, considering that the last time I had some flowery fake plants in Spidey’s tank, she pulled them right out of the substrate – I would NOT want to see her do that to a real plant!

Another biggie is that there is a risk you may introduce either a chemical or a pest/parasite into your tarantulas’ enclosure – which I know you don’t want. Unless you do some heavy research about the conditions of your plant place, many times we can’t control what pesticides or other organisms that a plant has come in contact with, so sometimes it’s much safer to just use an artificial plant instead. Considering that we don’t know much about tarantula illnesses and disease, it’s worth keeping clear of this entirely. There is a deadly tarantula disease called DKS – and while we aren’t entirely sure what the cause of it is, pesticides or similar chemicals are thought to be one of the possible causes of the disease.

What’s the exception?

Now, I’ve been talking a lot about my opinion on this in relation to classic terrariums such as the ones that I use with my tarantulas. These enclosures do not contain anything live except for the spider. The exception where I think it would be absolutely ok to do live plants would be if you were to do some research and create a bioactive enclosure. My hope is that if you are at that stage in tarantula keeping, you already know quite a bit about how to create one properly and safely for your tarantula – from microfauna (springtails, isopods) to fungi/moss to which plants can live and work together to sustain life in the enclosure – all while being safe for your spider. If you are at this stage, it’s so important to research every single thing you are putting into your tarantula’s enclosure and source these plants (and everything else) from sources you can trust and have kept the live plants chemical and pest free, safe for your spider. You do NOT want to just throw a bunch of plants and dirt in there and call it a day!

I hope this was helpful! To learn more about tarantula care, subscribe to my tarantula YouTube channel or check out my tarantula guide!