Avicularia braunshauseni — Fact Sheet

Avicularia braunshauseni · Avicularia braunshauseni

Full care guide and sources

📋 At a glance

🏠 Enclosure

House it alone. For a medium-large specimen, begin around 30 x 30 x 45 cm; smaller animals need proportionally smaller containers, and a truly large individual may require more space. Provide cross-ventilation on opposing sides at upper and lower levels. All gaps must be narrower than the carapace, and the door should open without tearing the main web.

🪨 Substrate and furnishings

Use clean unfertilized topsoil, coco fibre, or a soil-coco blend. A 5-8 cm base buffers water and makes spot cleaning possible; deep burrowing layers are not required unless the animal’s behaviour shows otherwise. Exclude fertilizer, pesticides, aromatic woods, sharp wire, and loose snagging fibre.

Cork bark, artificial leaves, and twigs should form several possible web anchors. Leave a maintenance channel to reach water without destroying the silk tube. Avoid unsecured rocks and mesh that can trap tarsal claws. If the animal consistently rejects elevated retreats and excavates instead, reassess the identification.

💡 Lighting

No UVB or basking lamp is needed for the genus-level setup. Provide 10-12 hours of indirect ambient light and an uninterrupted dark period. Direct sun and strong lamps can overheat the upper web rapidly.

🌡️ Temperature

• Daytime air: 21-26 °C
• Cool zone: 20-23 °C
• Night: 20-23 °C

💧 Humidity and water

Provide fresh water at all times. Overflow the dish lightly into one corner, then allow upper surfaces to dry. In a very dry room, add a few droplets to foliage or part of the web after dark, but never spray the spider or saturate the whole retreat. The 60-80% metadata range describes a broad operating window for ventilated Avicularia housing, not a species-specific target.

Watch physical conditions instead of chasing a hygrometer. Persistent condensation, sour substrate, spreading mold, or wet webbing means ventilation is inadequate or watering is excessive. A wrinkled abdomen and repeated drinking suggest dehydration. Small juveniles need more frequent checks because their containers change rapidly.

🪳 Feeding

Offer captive-reared roaches, crickets, or locusts where legal, normally no longer than the abdomen. Spiderlings can take small prey or freshly killed pieces twice weekly; growing juveniles often feed every 5-7 days; a well-conditioned adult usually needs a suitable item every 7-14 days. Adjust to actual size and abdomen condition.

Place prey near the web entrance and remove it within 24 hours if ignored. Stop feeding after repeated refusal, darkening, or closure of the retreat. Never force prey into a webbed-shut tube. After molting, wait until the fangs are black and the body is firm—often several days for juveniles and 7-10 days for adults.

Do not power-feed stock to reach a size advertised for the name. Overfeeding increases abdominal mass and fall risk. Calcium and vitamin dusts are unnecessary for a whole-prey tarantula diet.

☠️ Safety

A bite from Avicularia braunshauseni can cause puncture wounds, pain and swelling. Human bite reports are too uneven to predict an individual reaction or assign a precise venom potency to every species. Do not interpret a quiet animal or a “mild venom” label as permission to handle it.

Urticating hairs are a separate hazard: they can irritate skin and injure eyes. Avoid rubbing exposed skin or eyes; suspected eye exposure needs prompt medical assessment. Keep your face away from the enclosure and wear eye protection and gloves when removing molts or used substrate.

Use long tools and a catch cup, with a second containment tub for transfers in a closed room. Keep hands out of retreats and webbing, do not hand-feed, and do not chase an escaping spider. Keep transfers low to limit fall injuries to the animal.

After a bite, wash the wound with soap and water and contact a poison centre or medical service with the scientific name and time of exposure. Seek urgent care for severe or spreading pain, muscle cramps or persistent symptoms; call emergency services for breathing difficulty, throat swelling or collapse. Do not cut the wound or try to extract venom. Treatment focuses on wound assessment and symptom control under medical supervision.

🩺 Health — warning signs

• Taxonomic drift occurs when a seller’s label is copied as fact; keep the nomen-dubium warning with every transfer.
• Wet stagnant housing can cause decline in pinktoe-type tarantulas; cross-ventilation and drying surfaces are essential.
• A wrinkled abdomen, weak posture, or prolonged drinking points to dehydration or excess heat.
• A sealed retreat and fasting are normal premolt signs; opening the web can produce molt failure.
• Mold, phorid flies, or dense mites usually follow waste, feeder remains, and chronic dampness.
• Falls, leaking hemolymph, marked incoordination, eye exposure, or a clearly arrested molt need advice from an arachnid-experienced exotics veterinarian.

Never apply household pesticide, essential oil, or vertebrate mite medication around the enclosure.