AlienKeeper was built by tarantula keepers, around the everyday processes of keeping a room full of spiders. No app can tell you when your tarantula is hungry — that judgment stays with you. But the app can take a lot of the friction out of running a large collection. This guide walks through each feature and how it maps to real husbandry.
Tarantulas are opportunistic eaters. Missing a week here or there is not a crisis. Overfeeding, on the other hand, can cause real problems. A heavy tarantula is more likely to hurt itself if it falls, and a fat one will often disappear into a burrow for weeks at a time.
Interval feeding works well for most species. The numbers below are a solid starting point, not a rule. The abdomen is still your best guide — plump means slow down, small means feed more often or try a larger feeder.
In the wild, tarantulas eat whatever crosses their path. Beetles one week, a grasshopper the next, a roach after that. Rotating 4–5 different feeder types at home gets you closer to that.
There's also a practical safety reason to keep feeding records. If a tarantula gets sick after a feeding, knowing which feeder batch was offered — and when — is a lot more useful than trying to remember. With a large group, identifying a bad batch before it affects more animals can matter a lot. Having the history is the convenient way to do that reliably.
Tarantulas get a lot of fluid from well-hydrated prey, but a water dish should still always be available. Water is critical during molting — they need it to push out of the old exoskeleton, and animals kept bone dry are far more likely to have bad molts.
The frequency depends on enclosure size, humidity, and dish size, but every 7–10 days is a reasonable default. Replace the water and clean the dish at the same time so bacteria do not build up. For most common species, an overflowing dish also gives you enough ambient humidity without misting. Asian arboreals and some other moisture-lovers are exceptions — check the species before you set up.
Premolt usually means refusing food, less activity, sometimes a sealed burrow. This is the wrong time to feed. Once you spot the signs, set DND (Do Not Disturb) on that animal so it drops out of your feeding queue, and pull any live feeders that are still in the enclosure.
After the molt, log it. The same screen lets you set post-molt DND in one tap. Most species want 10–14 days of total peace while fangs and exoskeleton harden — no food, no handling. Fresh water needs to stay available the whole time, since they lose a lot of fluids during the process.
Once you have a few months of feeding and molt records, the app starts showing trends. These are not gimmicks — they change how you think about individual animals.
Monthly acceptance rates per animal. When a tarantula starts refusing food more often than usual, that is sometimes the earliest premolt or overfeeding signal — earlier than the visible signs.
Which feeders does this animal actually take? Some tarantulas love lateralis and ignore dubia. The chart shows it. Use that to tailor what you offer.
How often does this species molt at this stage of life? How has the interval stretched as the animal has grown? The variation across species is honestly surprising once you see it on a chart.
It is hard to remember everything about every species, especially once you are keeping a dozen different ones. Notes give you a place to capture things as they happen — habitat ideas, enclosure dimensions, care tweaks you want to try, something you've heard on a podcast, something you noticed today.
Sticky notes are the same thing, just pinned to the top of the animal's card. Use them for things that need your attention soon. A broken latch you have a temporary fix for. An injury you are watching. A rehouse you keep putting off.
If you are anything like us, you collect care guides, papers, studies and tarantula magazines and then lose track of them. They end up in random folders, downloaded, half-read, sometimes never even opened.
Every animal in AlienKeeper has its own files tab. Attach anything you want connected to that specific tarantula. Next time you need it, you do not have to dig.
AlienKeeper gives every tarantula its own profile card. You do not have to track care to use it. If all you want is a place to keep photos and basic info, that works too.
One of the best things about keeping tarantulas is watching them change. A sling that arrived in a small vial turns into a palm-sized juvenile, then into a striking adult. Every molt changes them. Upload photos after molts, after rehouses, whenever they are out and looking good. Over time you end up with a real timeline of each animal's life with you.
Most tarantula apps store everything in local phone memory. At best they offer a manual export. That works until the phone breaks, gets lost, or just dies — and the photos and feeding history go with it. AlienKeeper runs entirely in the cloud. Your data is encrypted, backed up automatically, and follows you to any device you log in from. There is nothing to manually export, and nothing to anxiously remember to back up.
Nobody wants to spend half an hour entering data. Every action in the app is built to be fast — logging a feeding should take a couple of taps, not navigating through five screens. That is the whole point.
Interval feeding works for most species. Slings every 7–10 days, juveniles every 10–14, adults every 14–30. Use the abdomen as your guide — plump means slow down, small means feed more often or offer a larger feeder. They will not starve if you miss a week, but consistency helps with growth and condition.
Two reasons. First, rotating 4–5 different feeder types gives your tarantulas a varied diet closer to what they would eat in nature. Second, if an animal gets sick, you need the feeding log to figure out which batch may have caused it. Without records, tracing the cause across a large collection is very difficult.
Every 7–10 days is a reasonable default. Clean the dish at the same time so bacteria do not build up. The exact frequency depends on enclosure size, humidity, and species. For most common species an overflowing dish also handles ambient humidity. Asian arboreals and other moisture-loving species are exceptions.
DND pauses all feeding reminders for that one animal. Use it when a feeder is refused, when you spot premolt signs, or during post-molt hardening. When the DND period ends, the animal goes back into the care queue normally.
At least 10–14 days for most species, longer for big adults. The fangs and exoskeleton need time to harden, and feeding too early risks injury. Keep fresh water available the whole time. AlienKeeper can set post-molt DND directly from the molt logging screen so you are not tempted to rush it.
Yes. Every animal has a profile card with photos and basic info. If all you want is a place to keep photos and species data, that works. The tracking features are there when you want them.
In encrypted cloud storage. There is no local-only mode where you might lose everything if a phone breaks. Your feeding history, photos, and notes are available on any device you log in from, with no manual exports.
Yes. The same tools work for other arachnids, reptiles, and insects.
This guide will keep growing as we add features and learn more from keepers using the app. If you have a husbandry workflow that should be in here, or a feature you want to see, the app has a feedback channel and we read everything that comes in.
Care needs differ from one species to the next, and covering those specifics is beyond the scope of this guide — its focus is on how AlienKeeper helps with particular aspects of keeping. It is not a species-specific care sheet and does not contain everything you need to keep an animal successfully. Always research the requirements of your specific species before you start keeping it.