The 8-Legged Scale: From Egg Sac to Matriarch—Where Do You Stand?
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The 8-Legged Scale: How to Know Your Tarantula Skill Level
The First Hit
When I first got into tarantulas, I didn’t sprint to the pet shop and grab the first hairy thing in a deli cup. I lurked. I obsessed. I mainlined shaky YouTube rehousings at 2 a.m., scrolled care guides like gospel, and watched feeding videos that felt more like low-budget horror films.
And still—I hesitated. Pick the wrong spider and you kill the obsession with failure. Play it too safe and the spark fizzles out.
Finally, I walked into a shop, laid out my résumé of exotic pets—snakes, fish, geckos—and let the clerk pick my poison. That’s how Glitch came home.
That night, I sat under a single lamp, staring into the enclosure like it was a locked briefcase. The spider sat motionless. Alien. I let out a breath—and bang—legs shot up in a full threat posture before it vanished into silk tunnels. That was the moment I knew: tarantulas aren’t like anything else. They don’t bluff. They don’t tolerate. They don’t bend. They just are.
And I was hooked.
Your Resume Doesn’t Mean Sh*t (At First)
I thought I was ready. I’d been chewed on by tokay geckos more times than I’ll admit. I once let a green tree python tag me just to prove I wasn’t scared. I built saltwater tanks complicated enough to impress NASA, just to keep a mandarin goby from starving. I could ID leachianus gecko localities like a sommelier sniffing a cork (That "GT" is probably a NLS IYKYK) - I jest.
And none of it mattered.
Here’s the dirty secret: none of that experience transfers cleanly. What it gave me wasn’t a toolkit—it was a reference manual. A way to spot patterns. A way to watch.
Because the one skill that really matters in tarantula keeping is simple and brutal: use your eyes.
Look. Really look. At posture. At webbing. At the shift from relaxed to stressed. At how a so-called “pet rock” is actually broadcasting a dozen signals if you bother to pay attention.
Fearlessness won’t save you. Observation will.
The Care Guide Trap
Here’s the trap every beginner stumbles into: care guides feel like gospel. Step-by-step instructions. Do this, don’t do that. Easy.
Until it isn’t.
I’ve got 70+ tarantulas across 30 species. They all read the manual differently. Four Green Bottle Blue slings, identical size and setup: one webs low, one hugs the walls, one builds a fortress, one freelances chaos.
That’s when you realize: the spider writes the care guide. Not you.
If it webs low—give it anchors. If it camps on the walls—give it cover and height. If it decides to silk everything like a construction site, throw in some dried brush and watch the architecture take shape.
And yes, sometimes that means you stumble into the Voldemort of tarantula taxonomy. Cue thunder, lightning, wolves howling in the distance.
Semi-arboreal. The classification-that-shall-not-be-named. Love it, hate it, argue about it—your spider doesn’t care. It’ll show you where it wants to be.
Care guides are training wheels. The golden rule is observation.
The Elephant and the Mouse
Your stress level in this hobby has nothing to do with the spider. It’s you.
Take dwarfs. We’re talking slings so tiny a misplaced air vent could turn the whole thing into a Greek tragedy. They’ll test your patience. But if you prep, if you understand microclimates and how to balance them with your actual climate, they’re ridiculously rewarding.
Now flip the scale. Orange Baboon Tarantulas. OBTs. Internet legends. Old World, fossorial, infamous for their “don’t touch me” attitude. Memed as hell. The truth? Give them dirt, cover, and a chance to dig, and they’ll show you what real engineering looks like. Dirt mounds. Web curtains. Murder holes. Feed the hole, water the hole, observe. It’s not rocket science. The only real trick comes during a rehouse—and that’s when you find out if your husbandry’s sharp or sloppy.
The mouse teaches delicacy. The elephant teaches humility. Both prove the same thing: the spider isn’t the challenge. You are.
Progression Isn’t a Ladder—It’s a Mirror
Everyone wants to know where they stand. Am I a beginner? Am I advanced? Am I ready for an Old World?
Here’s the truth: this hobby isn’t a ladder where you grind from level one to boss fight. It’s a mirror.
You don’t measure readiness by years or numbers. You measure it by how well you observe, adapt, and keep your cool when things go sideways.
That’s why I built this: the 8-Legged Scale. Not a badge. Not a flex. A gut check.
The 8-Legged Scale
Level 1 - "Egg Sac"
Pure curiosity. You’re scrolling late at night, watching feeding clips on loop. You don’t own one yet, but you can’t look away.
Level 2
You’ve kept pets—reptiles, fish, maybe frogs. You know how to keep something alive in a box. But you’ve never cracked open a vial and watched a spider vanish into a hole thinner than a straw. That’s the leap.
Level 3
You’ve managed delicate before: saltwater fish that starved without pods, frogs that dried out if you missed a misting, snakes that bit for fun. You know fragile. But tarantulas? They don’t play by the same rules. It’s not about touch. It’s about pattern. This is where your eyes become tools.
Level 4
You’ve got your first tarantula. You’ve punched holes and realized ventilation isn’t “optional.” You’ve had your first “is it dead or just molting?” panic. Welcome to the stage where instincts start to matter more than instructions.
Level 5
This is where care guides start breaking down. Your GBB ignores the blueprint and webs low. Another clings to the walls. Another goes nuclear with silk. And you’re standing there, laughing at Voldemort himself: semi-arboreal. This is the level where you stop keeping “a species” and start keeping that individual spider.
Level 6
You’ve faced speed. You’ve faced defensiveness. You’ve faced fragility. Dwarf slings vanishing between vents. OBTs building death traps. And you didn’t fold. You adapted. The stress doesn’t disappear—it just shifts from spider to keeper.
Level 7
Now you can read them. The premolt slump. The “I’m hungry” webbing. The quirks that make one spider different from the next. You don’t just react—you anticipate. You’re not just a keeper. You’re a curator.
Level 8 - "Matriarch"
The deep end. You’ve bred, or you’ve pulled a spider back from a bad molt, or you’ve stared down an escape. You’ve managed collections big enough to need systems, not just shelves. At this point, you don’t flex fearlessness. You flex competence. Tarantulas aren’t trophies. They’re artifacts. Living color in your care.
Closing Shot
The 8-Legged Scale isn’t about bragging rights. It’s about honesty.
Too high, and you’ll torch your confidence—or worse, your spider. Too low, and you’ll never see the real magic this hobby has to offer.
The sweet spot is in the middle—matching curiosity with capacity. Tarantulas don’t care about your ego. They care about stability, environment, and whether you’re watching close enough. To quote Dave from "Dave's Little Beasties" - Be kind, be calm, and always remember to love your spiders.
So—where do you land? Egg Sac? Matriarch? Or somewhere in between?