Heteroscodra maculata — Fact Sheet

Heteroscodra maculata · Heteroscodra maculata

Full care guide and sources

📋 At a glance

🏠 Enclosure

• Adult enclosure: 30 × 30 × 45 cm (length × width × height).
• Provide an upright cork retreat and connected web anchors; preserve usable climbing height after adding substrate and drainage.
• Substrate planning depth: 5 cm
• Housing: One animal per enclosure

🪨 Substrate and furnishings

Design the enclosure around vertical cover and safe access. The spider needs routes and web anchors, but the keeper also needs a clear way to refill water and remove remains without opening the whole enclosure.

A good adult enclosure has more height than a terrestrial setup, but it should not be a bare tall box. Give a vertical cork tube or curved bark, bark-to-wall web anchors, leaf cover, and a water dish that can be serviced from the safest door. Keep the substrate modest but not sterile; it buffers humidity and catches waste without turning the enclosure into a wet chamber.

💡 Lighting

Use ambient room light for a predictable day-night cycle; bright basking lamps are unnecessary. Avoid direct lamps that overheat or dry the enclosure too aggressively.

🌡️ Temperature

• Daytime air: 23-27 °C
• Cool zone: 21-23 °C
• Night: 20-23 °C

💧 Humidity and water

Keep humidity moderate to moderately high, but only with good ventilation. A dish of clean water should always be available. Lightly moistening part of the substrate or the area near the retreat is enough; wet walls, condensation, and heavy stale air mean the conditions are wrong.

🪳 Feeding

Suitable diet: crickets, roaches, locusts, and other suitable insects offered with escape prevention in mind. Remove uneaten prey and food remains. Feed according to body condition, not only appetite, and avoid leaving live prey during premolt.

A fasting tarantula may be normal if body condition remains good. Escalate only when refusal comes with weight loss, dehydration, weakness, or obvious enclosure problems.

☠️ Safety

Heteroscodra maculata must be managed without direct handling. Clinical reports of bites from some African and Asian tarantulas, including Pterinochilus murinus and Poecilotheria regalis, describe severe pain and delayed or prolonged muscle cramps. These reports justify caution across this group; they do not establish the exact severity of every species or every bite.

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

The riskiest moments with Heteroscodra maculata are usually maintenance moments. If every water refill or cleanup requires the enclosure to be wide open, the chance of a sudden bolt and escape is high. Place the water dish and feeding area where they can be reached with minimal opening and without tearing apart the main webbed retreat.

Watch for stale humid air, mold around food remains, a visibly shrunken abdomen, long periods exposed during the day, and difficult molts. Falls are also a real risk in a tall enclosure, so avoid hard or sharp objects below the spider’s normal routes along cork and glass.

A bite from this species should be avoided, not treated as a routine part of care. For serious injury, leaking hemolymph, severe weakness, breathing signs, or a difficult molt, seek an exotic-veterinary professional when possible. For rehousing, use a prepared catch container or controlled tube method; do not chase the spider across an open room.