The best food for a pet spider is live insects of the right size, such as flightless fruit flies, small crickets, flies, and roach nymphs. Spiders cannot chew, so they do not eat ham, eggs, vegetables, or cooked meat. Feed what your spider’s species would catch, and match the prey to the spider’s size.
What Spiders Can Eat
- Small spiders (jumping spiders, spiderlings): flightless fruit flies, springtails, pinhead crickets.
- Medium spiders: small crickets, houseflies, blowflies, roach nymphs.
- Tarantulas: appropriately sized crickets, Dubia roaches, and the occasional mealworm or superworm.
Choose feeder insects from a pet supplier or raise your own. Wild-caught bugs can carry pesticides, so pet keepers avoid them.
What Not to Feed a Spider
- Processed meat, boiled egg, tuna, or other human food: spiders feed on liquefied insides of live prey. Human food rots quickly in the enclosure and invites mold and mites.
- Prey larger than the spider: big crickets and roaches can injure a small spider.
- Insects that bite or sting: ants, wasps, and bees are risky.
- Fruit, vegetables, or sugar water: not part of a spider’s diet. A few drops of plain water on the wall or a shallow water dish is enough.
How Often to Feed
Babies and young spiders eat more often, every day or two. Adult jumping spiders eat a few times a week. Adult tarantulas usually eat once every one to two weeks. A spider with a round, healthy abdomen is eating enough. A spider with a swollen abdomen is overfed, and one with a shriveled abdomen needs food and water.
Common Feeding Problems
- Refusing food: spiders stop eating before a molt. If it is hiding in silk or looks dull and lies still, wait until it molts.
- Leftover prey: remove it after a day or so. Crickets can bite a molting spider.
- Overfeeding: an overweight tarantula can burst its abdomen in a fall.
See also what pet spiders eat, vitamins for spiders, and what cobalt blue tarantulas eat.
Bottom Line
Feed your spider live, correctly sized insects and skip table food. If it stops eating for several weeks and is not molting, ask an experienced keeper or an exotic pet vet.
