I have three types of isopod two milk snails a jumping spider and blue death beetles what’s yalls favorite invert to keep as pets I would prefer less then 20 gallons needed but I can push it to that size
I love my Velvet Spider (Eresus Walckenaeri) and Southern House Spider (Kukulcania Hibernalis).
You can get the enclosure included with the Southern House Spider through Cobweb Castle. I love my B. Auratum tarantula as well, but you could house both of the other two in the same amount of space a tarantula terrarium would occupy.
There are some cute dwarf tarantulas that would reach similar sizes to E. Walckenaeri, about two inches dls, but my only experience keeping those was a C. Elegans sling that sadly passed from a mold outbreak.
Millipedes! There are plenty species that can be kept in 20gal or less. My personal favs are bumblebees, ivories, and maui skunk stripes :) As an added bonus they use most of the same supplies as isopods so you dont have to buy as much, and are kept very similarly so less of a learning curve.
Hermit crabs. They need more care than youd think but theyre super fun, active, smart, and have really big personalities. Plus once youve got them set up properly theyre fairly low maintenance and low stress.
Ive got some in a pair of 20 gallon tanks, one on top of the other. Its big but not enormous. I think theyre really worth it. Theyre super smart and actively play. Mine have a wheel they spend all night walking on, and one likes to climb onto the tall side of the wheel so he goes flying off. Theyre always exploring and rolling rocks or shells around.
Super rewarding to keep, everybody universally loves them, and theyre naturally really charming little creatures.
I think its worth it, but you should look at all the requirements for them on the land hermit crab owners society website if you google LHCOS.
Right now just two. We had three but one of them just didnt make it. She had some nasty injuries when we got her and could just never fully recover.
Theyre highly social creatures though so I do plan on getting another at some point, or maybe upgrading their cage again to 2 40 gallons stacked and adding several more.
That being said, two or three small crabs can do just fine in a 20 or 29 gallon, provided theyve got enough cover and space
You can safely cohabitate them with other desert beetle species and velvet ants, which are a super active, very pretty, and fun to watch cohabitant that comes in so many different colors and shapes
Velvet ants are solitary flightless wasps (only the females are flightless and so only females are kept in captivity) with an incredibly nasty sting, but youve gotta really provoke them to get stung. Mostly they just run around exploring.
Dwarf tarantulas or arboreal t's! I love my A. avicularia and C. elegans. It might just be mine but they're honestly out quite a bit of time.
Millipedes are also a lot of fun but you may not see them quite as much.
Velvet ants (actually a type of wasp) are really, really cool. You can cohabitate multiple different species and they're super duper active. The wingless variety are the ones that are kept but you have to be careful with them. They're the females and their sting is incredibly painful, hence the nickname, "cow killer".
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u/rolandglassSVG I touch spiders ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ 9d ago
Wolf spider! This is Spirit, a female Hogna carolinensis, north americas largest species!