Captive bred

We sell captive bred invertebrates and it means better outcomes for you. 

Buying captive bred invertebrates is best practice. This is very important for groups such as spiders and scorpions, often the target of unscrupulous collectors. There are many advantages of buying from legitimate captive-breeders and avoiding those that engage in poaching and simply collect much of their stock from the wild. Here's why:

• It protects vulnerable species from over collection
• The invertebrates are of a known age. (Many invertebrates have relatively short lives anyway, so why risk getting something that may have only months or even weeks of life left).
• They are free from parasites and diseases.
• We have many years of experience breeding invertebrates - that means we know how to keep them, and can help you with information. Collectors often don't know much about how to keep these animals alive and healthy long term. 

How can I tell if an invertebrate is really captive bred?

Unfortunately there are many options online that mention captive-bred invertebrates, but don't actually follow what they say. You can identify and avoid these by checking the following things:

• Do they sell lots of adult specimens of many different species?
• Do they sell adult or large specimens of slow-growing and potentially vulnerable species? (Flinders Ranges Scorpions, Giant Burrowing Cockroaches, Giant millipedes, tarantulas, trapdoor and funnel-web spiders).
• Do they have lots of species 'out of stock' indicating they have a revolving door of species coming and going.
• Question them. Ask for the details about the breeding of your potential purchase.

While collecting some invertebrates periodically isn't necessarily a bad practice, and is of course required to start any captive-breeding program, continuous collection of invertebrates simply to sell them commercially is unsustainable and unethical. With more and more pressure on these critically important animals from habitat loss, pollution and climate change, it's simply not worth the risk of losing some of these precious species. There are many examples of the pet trade contributing to the decline of invertebrate species overseas. Please, let's stop it happening in Australia. 

Find out more about this issue here.

Young tarantula spiderlings (slings) captive bred at Minibeast Wildlife. We captive breed many species of spiders and we have refined our methods over many years to get the best results and healthy spiders for our customers.