Psalmopoeus victori — Fact Sheet

Psalmopoeus victori · Psalmopoeus victori

Full care guide and sources

📋 At a glance

🏠 Enclosure

An adult should have a vertical enclosure around 30 x 30 x 45 cm, with a cork tube or broad bark slab that reaches close to the lid and gives the spider a protected retreat. Leave a service corridor for water and waste so routine work does not require pulling apart the webbed hide.

🪨 Substrate and furnishings

Decoration should solve husbandry problems. Useful decor creates retreats, climbing structure, web anchors, shaded routes, and a protected path to water. Decorative clutter that blocks access is a liability.

Use cork bark, bark slabs, angled branches, leaf litter, and firm substrate in a way that supports the species’ arboreal retreat style. Do not repeatedly destroy functional webbing just to make the enclosure look tidy. Remove moldy food remains, dead feeders, and soaked waste, but leave clean working structure alone.

For all fast arboreal tarantulas, keep the main retreat slightly behind or below the opening rather than directly in line with the door. This gives the spider an obvious path back to cover during maintenance.

💡 Lighting

Normal room lighting is enough. UVB is not required, and bright basking lamps are more likely to dry or overheat the enclosure than to improve care. A regular day-night rhythm helps observation and feeding routines.

🌡️ Temperature

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

💧 Humidity and water

Aim for moderate to moderately high humidity with a constantly available water dish and periodic dampening of one side or lower substrate area. The enclosure should breathe well enough that webbing is not sitting in stale condensation.

Water should be available at all times in a shallow stable dish. Spiderlings can use a very small dish, dampened substrate patch, or carefully managed water source, but they should not be left in a dry container simply because they are small.

Ventilation is part of humidity control. If the enclosure smells sour, stays wet for days, grows heavy mold, or has condensation that never clears, reduce water input and improve air exchange before blaming the species.

🪳 Feeding

Feed appropriately sized crickets, roaches, locusts, and other safe feeder insects. Prey should usually be no larger than the spider’s abdomen or body length, and it should be removed if not eaten. Never leave live prey with a tarantula that is in premolt, freshly molted, weak, or trapped in a retreat.

Spiderlings can take small prey once or twice a week when they are growing and settled. Juveniles often do well every 7-10 days. Adults are better fed by body condition than by a rigid calendar, often around every 10-21 days depending on abdomen size, temperature, recent molt, and activity.

Remove uneaten prey promptly. Wait for the fangs and exoskeleton to harden after a molt before feeding again: roughly 24-48 hours for small spiderlings, several days for juveniles, and often 5-10 days for larger animals.

Refusal is not automatically a problem. Check recent molts, abdominal condition, temperature, disturbance, prey size, and whether the animal can drink. Weight loss, a shriveled abdomen, abnormal posture, or repeated failed molts are more important warning signs than a single missed meal.

☠️ Safety

A bite from Psalmopoeus victori 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.

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 main preventable problems are bolting into the room during water changes, dehydration behind webbing, wet stagnant air, rough rehousing, and defensive bites. Most of them are enclosure-access problems: the keeper cannot water, feed, or clean without opening too much of the setup or disturbing the retreat.

If something looks wrong, first verify temperature, hydration, ventilation, water access, prey size, retreat fit, recent disturbance, and molt timing. Serious trauma, leaking hemolymph, persistent abnormal posture, breathing difficulty, or a trapped molt needs experienced exotic-veterinary advice when available.

Establish a baseline during the first months: normal posture, preferred retreat, drinking, feeding response, waste location, and reaction to maintenance. Later changes are easier to interpret when you know what normal looked like for that individual.