Complete Guide to Arboreal Tarantula Care
Expert Tips for Tree-Dwelling Spider Species
If you’ve recently added an arboreal tarantula to your collection, or are thinking about adding one, you’ve probably realized that arboreal tarantula care requires a different approach from terrestrial and fossorial species. Unlike ground-dwellers, they live high in the treetops, so their care requires a very specific setup. Whether you’re a new hobbyist or a seasoned keeper, this guide will help you understand how they live in the wild and how to create an appropriate environment with adequate care for them to thrive.
What Makes a Tarantula “Arboreal”?
Arboreal tarantulas live primarily in trees, often 20 feet or more off the ground. Because of this, they have long legs and wider toe pads to help them grip bark or leaves without slipping. They’re quick, alert, and good climbers. Understanding arboreal tarantulas helps with proper enclosure setup and care. Check out our collection of common arboreal tarantulas for sale, including Caribena versicolor, Poecilotheria regalis, and Psalmopoeus irminia.
If you’re used to keeping ground-dwellers, expect a different energy here. These spiders are more active, often webbing up the upper corners of their enclosures or building elaborate silken hammocks across branches.
Choosing the Right Enclosure Setup
Why Airflow Is So Important
Creating the proper arboreal tarantula enclosure means prioritizing height over floor space. In the wild, arboreal tarantulas are high up in the tree canopies, far from the damp soil with an abundance of fresh air. The natural airflow helps keep mold, bacteria, fungus, and pathogens at bay.
In captivity, it’s essential to replicate this open-air environment and keep airflow moving to maintain the health of your arboreal tarantula by providing tall enclosures that allow for climbing and web-building up high. After dehydration, the leading cause of death in arboreal tarantulas is illness from mold and fungal spores, which can enter their book lungs when the enclosure lacks proper airflow.
Cross ventilation is one of the best ways to achieve natural airflow in your arboreal enclosure and maintain proper humidity for your arboreal tarantula. That means having small ventilation holes on the sides of the enclosure to allow for healthy air exchange.
Adding ventilation to only the top of the enclosure is also possible, but this requires a screen mesh since the hole needs to be large enough to allow airflow, but small enough to hold humidity. This is the method that is used in our Tarantula Room Enclosures, which allow for ample airflow on top to prevent stagnant conditions without making your enclosure too dry.
Just be careful with the size of your ventilation holes. Tarantulas can squeeze through any opening the width of their carapace (the hard, round part that is often called the “head” where the eye cluster is attached). Keep holes small but frequent to keep your spider safe. We offer a variety of tall enclosures for arboreal tarantulas in both round and square shapes to suit your preference.
Pro Tip: Your arboreal tarantula’s home should be about 2-3x its leg span in width/depth, and 3-4x its height. We recommend using organic coconut fiber with a depth of at least 3 inches of soil for your arboreal tarantula setup; this depth of soil helps maintain humidity within the enclosure.
What Goes Inside The Enclosure
The goal is to make your arboreal tarantula's enclosure as natural as possible so that they thrive. Because their enclosures are larger and taller, they open up more possibilities for bioactive enclosure setups, which we highly recommend! Springtails, isopods, and plants in an enclosure help eliminate the threat of mold and fungal growth, and all of this will also encourage your tarantula to exhibit more interesting behaviors than a "bare-bones" enclosure.
If you want to go a more basic route, we recommend:
- Organic Coconut Fiber for Your Soil: This is a sterile and clean material that is inexpensive and holds humidity well.
- Real Wood: This can be cork bark or branches purchased from your local pet store. It helps your tarantula settle in faster! The smell of real wood makes them feel at home in the trees. Remember not to use wood from outside unless they are properly boiled or baked.
- Proper Fresh Water at All Times: While they love misting, a water dish is a great backup in between mistings.
Feeding, Water & General Maintenance
Arboreal Tarantula Feeding Tips
Arboreal species don’t usually forage on the ground, so the best food items for arboreal tarantulas are those that climb; this includes crickets, red runner roaches, flies, and moths.
Baby arboreal tarantulas often prefer smaller prey, which can sometimes be harder to source. If you live in an area where tiny roaches or crickets are harder to find, we suggest offering fresh-killed crickets or roaches, but make sure that these items are placed either in the web hammock or up high in the enclosure on a branch or cork bark.
Remember: Arboreal tarantulas have the instinct to stay as high as possible since their home is in the trees, so make sure live prey can also climb up high in the enclosure via branches or decorations so your tarantula can easily come into contact with its prey!
Arboreal tarantulas are especially sensitive to dehydration not only because they are native to tropical regions, but also because they burn more energy (and moisture) from constant climbing. As a result, they have faster metabolisms, grow more quickly, and require more food and water than many ground-dwelling species.
We often get questions about how to offer water to arboreal tarantulas. Since these animals want to be high up in trees and are often in tropical regions, they are often drinking water off tree bark or leaves after rainfall. That’s why arboreal tarantulas (like many arboreal animals) love to drink when they are being misted, since it mimics natural rainfall in captivity. To them, drinking from falling water (your misting) is the best way to make sure the water is fresh and clean. After all, pools of standing water in tropical regions can easily harbor pathogens and parasites!
Regardless of this fact, we like to offer our arboreal tarantulas water dishes at all times! We like to include deep but narrow water dishes via 5 dram vials (or larger if needed). This method allows for your arboreal tarantula to have access to fresh water for longer (great for trips away from home!) but also prevents crickets and other food items from falling into the water dish and making a mess.
Here’s a simple routine to follow:
- Feed once a week.
- Misting once a week is usually enough to maintain humidity (aim for the sides of the enclosure, not the spider).
- Clean water in a water dish should be available at all times and changed weekly.
- Some people employ elevated water dishes, but make sure it can support the weight of your tarantula.
- Provide fixtures to climb and web on.
Watch for uneaten food and remove it within 24 hours to avoid molding. If your arboreal tarantula doesn’t eat, try again in a few days. They also won’t eat during a molt. Remember to remove molt skin after a molt to avoid molding as well.
Lighting and Day/Night Cycles (Optional)
Special lighting isn’t necessary for proper arboreal tarantula care, though some keepers choose to add LED or full-spectrum fixtures to simulate a natural day/night cycle. This can encourage more natural behavior, and if you have live plants in the setup, it’s a win-win. Just make sure the light doesn’t raise the enclosure temperature too much as heat stress creates a real risk for your arboreal tarantula.
Quick Tips for Healthy Arboreal Tarantulas
Final Thoughts
Arboreal tarantulas aren’t necessarily harder to keep, as some might think; they're just different (which I’m sure plenty of us can relate to). Once you understand their instincts and needs, they’re fascinating pets. You can watch them hunt from their cork tube or build webs across their branches.
If you’re setting up your first arboreal enclosure, keep things simple. Give them height, airflow, and a solid place to hide and web. Some species prefer tubes to rest in, others prefer branches or cork to web on. A good place to start is a diagonal cork tube. We recommend our tall enclosures for arboreals that come in either round and square designs.
Common Questions About Arboreal Tarantulas
Do arboreal tarantulas need a heat lamp?
No, room temperature is ideal. Too much heat can be dangerous for arboreal tarantulas.
Can I use soil as substrate?
We recommend a dry layer of coconut fiber.
Do I need to use plants?
No, not at all, but if you do then avoid anything sprayed with pesticides and only add non-toxic plants. You do, however, need to add tubes, cork bark, branches, or something for them to climb on and stay above ground.
Why Keepers Love Us
Our customers trust us because we’re keepers ourselves with years of hands-on experience in the hobby. That means the advice we share isn’t guesswork or copied from a forum, it’s what we’ve learned firsthand through real keeping. Every arboreal care tip we provide is based on our personal experience. We only offer tarantulas for sale that we'd proudly keep ourselves.
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Check out our arboreal tarantula collection to browse healthy, captive-bred tarantulas for sale and find the perfect tree-dwelling species for you.
About the Author: William West, Owner of Exotics Unlimited
William West eats, breathes, and lives in the world of tarantulas. A lifelong keeper who’s worked with over 150 species, he founded Exotics Unlimited to share his passion with fellow enthusiasts. His obsession with spiders started early. His most nostalgic food memory from childhood? A spider-shaped sugar cookie. Today, Will has turned his fascination into a reputable brand and is one of the most trusted voices in the community offering firsthand experience and advice to help keepers provide the best possible care for their tarantulas.
