Can Tarantulas Eat Mealworms?
Young tarantulas and their offspring often scavenge for mealworms from the ground, while adult tarantulas may show no interest in prey that doesn’t move — which can create difficulties for owners as uneaten live food must be regularly removed from their enclosures.
Tarantulas in the wild feed on various insects, so providing them with a balanced diet is ideal. Mealworms provide an easy and affordable option, but should only be used as supplements instead of their primary source of nutrition.
Can Tarantulas Eat Mealworms?
Tarantulas are predatory carnivorous spiders that prey upon any animals that are smaller than them in nature, hunting by ambush in hidden spaces or burrows until their prey approaches and striking. Depending on its species, some even prey upon birds and reptiles!
Mealworms contain high fat contents and may be too rich for some tarantula species. Furthermore, mealworms provide food sources for parasites like mites; thus it’s important to monitor your tarantula’s condition carefully when feeding this diet.
Young and sling tarantulas may be coaxed into eating mealworms by dangling them before them, but adult specimens will usually show no interest. Therefore, to ensure your tarantula receives all of its nutrition needs from its mealworms, gut-load them first for two or three days prior to offering them directly to it. This will guarantee it receives optimal nourishment from its mealworms.
Nutritional Content of Mealworms
Mealworms provide tarantulas with protein, vitamins, and fat for their diets. Furthermore, they are both inexpensive and readily available at pet stores compared to crickets which often face shortages — two factors which have caused many owners of tarantulas to use mealworms as primary feeder insects.
However, it is important to remember that mealworms cannot be the sole food source for your tarantula; its diet should contain various live insects like cockroaches (especially B. dubia roaches), grasshoppers and even mealworms for optimal performance.
Feed your tarantula one insect at a time instead of scattering them throughout its cage, to decrease the chance that an uneaten mealworm burrows out and remains unseen, potentially leading to intestinal impaction or other issues. Also, before offering them for feedings to your tarantula it would be wise to gut load each mealworm beforehand for added stability and beneficial effects.
Health Benefits and Risks of Mealworms
Mealworms as food sources for pet tarantulas may reduce trips to the veterinarian, which can be costly and uncomfortable for both spiders and owners. Oral nematodes can prevent tarantulas from eating properly and only need be removed by an anesthesiologist under anesthesia.
new keepers may be wary of feeding live prey for fear of escapees; mealworms provide an ideal alternative. Plus, they last a long time without becoming smelly like crickets can.
However, mealworms should not be fed solely to tarantulas; rather they should form part of a well-rounded diet including insects and vegetables. Feeding mealworms solely will lead to malnutrition; young mealworms of 10–15 mm in length are ideal for small tarantulas while standard mealworms work better with medium and larger-sized tarantulas; giant mealworms should only be used when feeding large ones.
Serving Size and Frequency of Feeding Mealworms
Mealworms are one of the best feeding options for tarantula owners who keep spiders. Easy to breed and affordable, mealworms provide quick feedings without stinky crickets!
However, mealworms should only be used as primary feeders of your tarantula for certain circumstances. They can quickly burrow their way under substrate in their cage; to prevent this happening, any uneaten mealworms should be removed as soon as they remain uneaten — this may prove particularly challenging with younger or smaller spiders that cannot subdue or kill the mealworms on their own.
Mealworms have a tough waxy exoskeleton that makes them difficult to manage, while many of them contain harmful chemicals that could prove lethal to tarantulas if harvested from your backyard. Therefore, before offering mealworms as food to your tarantula you should make sure that they have not been exposed to pesticides or any other potentially toxic agents.
Other Alternatives to Mealworms
Mealworms provide a reliable alternative to live prey due to fears of escapees and last a long time without stinking up their environment like crickets can.
Mealworms provide protein, fat and many essential minerals such as calcium, copper, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, selenium and zinc for pets. Furthermore, they contain trace amounts of vitamin B12. Although mealworms provide plenty of nutrition they should not be fed alone but should instead be supplemented by providing other feeder insects such as crickets or locusts as part of a balanced diet plan.
Before feeding mealworms to your tarantula, it’s essential that they are gut loaded — this means giving them a nutritional diet for at least 24 hours prior to offering them as supplements to its diet. Furthermore, only offering one at a time may reduce how many burrow and go un-eaten.
Conclusion about Eating Mealworms
Though mealworms may seem like an attractive live prey option for their tarantulas, they aren’t the ideal source of nutrition as their composition lacks essential proteins, vitamins and minerals that your spider needs to thrive. Plus, mealworms tend to turn into beetles when fed to them — creating unattractive beetle beetle shapes which could potentially become unhealthy beetles!
Tarantulas have tough, waxy exoskeletons which are unpleasant to touch, which makes feeding them with your fingers or forceps more challenging than expected. Furthermore, their presence could trigger an unwelcome response in their container by way of smell if someone walks by their cage, potentially making for an unpleasant experience for both themselves and you.
Mealworms don’t climb, making them unsuitable food sources for arboreal tarantulas that prefer hiding among vertical pieces of bark during the day and will likely miss meals that aren’t directly in their path.
