If you ask yourself the question about the right jumping spider food, the answer is basically very simple: as varied as possible! In everyday life, however, there are always other challenges and questions when feeding the little jumpers. How do I get the jumping spider food into the terrarium? Which food animals can I feed? Why isn’t my spider eating? These and other questions will be answered in this article.
General information on jumping spider nutrition
First, it’s important to know that the only appropriate food for jumping spiders consists of various live insects. One reason jumping spiders are so special is that they can catch prey up to 1.5 times their own size. They hunt their prey by sight during the day, and you can often observe their jumping ability while feeding the little ones. To ensure the animals can find and successfully hunt their prey, it’s important to provide bright lighting, sufficient warmth, and a terrarium that isn’t too large.
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Good Conditions for a Successful Hunt
It’s not just about food: your terrarium, lighting, and heating must also be suitable for your jumping spider. Our care guide will help you check your setup and explains water and molting.
As a rule of thumb for a well-fed spider, its abdomen—that is, its rear end—should not be more than 1 to 1.5 times the size of its carapace, or “head.” If a spider’s abdomen is more oval or elliptical in shape, it could probably use another feeding. If its abdomen appears plump and rather round, you can skip a feeding without worrying. A slightly sunken, flat abdomen, on the other hand, is a sign of dehydration, so you should provide your spider with water again.
Which insects serve as jumping spider food?
In principle, all kinds of insects can serve as food for jumping spiders. However, it’s important to make sure that the prey isn’t more than 1.5 times the size of your spider. It’s also advisable to vary the types of prey and, for example, not to feed only grasshoppers. You can, for instance, alternate between flies, crickets, cockroaches, ovenfish, maggots, etc.
In our experience, spiders are particularly fond of prey that, like the spider itself, tend to stay in the upper part of the terrarium—such as flies and grasshoppers. However, these two should not be the only food sources. Finally, it’s also important to know that some feed insects—especially crickets, grasshoppers, and even mealworms—can be dangerous to your spider while it’s molting. These insects may injure or even kill your spider if it is in the sensitive molting phase. For this reason, you should refrain from feeding these insects during this phase if necessary. Flies, for example, are generally not a threat to your spider.
The following food animals will help you make your choice. You don’t have to keep them all at home at the same time. In addition to the feeding range, consider your spider’s actual size and what prey it can handle well.
FH1-2:
Small fruit fly “ant”
Large fruit fly
FH3-4:
Large fruit fly
Thermobia domestica “Ovenfish”
FH5-7:
Thermobia domestica “Ovenfish”
Terfly
Gold flies
Feeding tweezers
from FH7:
Blowflies
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Here’s How to Stock Up on Food
Have you chosen the right feed animals? Here’s how to store and care for them until the next feeding—even for a single jumping spider.
How do I get the food animals into the terrarium?
In order to get the food animals into the terrarium successfully and with as few escapes as possible, it makes sense to purchase a variety of tweezers. Spring steel and normal steel tweezers are particularly suitable. These can be used to catch the food animals by a pair of legs and transport them into the terrarium. Caution! Crickets, crickets and grasshoppers, for example, can shed their last and largest pair of legs and thus still escape. For this reason, you should try to catch them by the front pair of legs to minimize escape attempts as much as possible. Many other food insects such as Terfly or Drosophila can often be shaken directly from their sales box into the terrarium in portions. Another uncomplicated feeding method is as follows: Add the desired number of maggots to the terrarium each week. These are much easier to dose with tweezers than flies. With this method, the jumping spider can eat a maggot directly or eat the resulting fly a few days later.
What can I do if my spider is not eating?
Not every break in feeding is a cause for concern. First, check whether your jumping spider is still well-fed or preparing to molt. If it retreats into a denser web, leave it alone and do not open the web. Remove any uneaten crickets and grasshoppers.
Next, check the conditions in the terrarium: Is it bright enough during the day? Does the measured temperature match your species’ needs? Don’t just increase the heat on a hunch. Be sure to take measurements where your spider actually spends its time, and avoid direct sunlight on the terrarium.
The prey can also play a role. If your spider is active but won’t eat the food you offer, you can try a smaller prey item the next time you feed it. The selection based on FH mentioned above will help you with this.
After molting, your jumping spider needs time to recover. Don’t rush it with food; wait until it becomes active again.
If you have any further questions, please leave them in the comments below the article.
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