The first picture is of feather millipedes, species is Brachycybe lecontii. Acquired from Samson Braden. He goes by DeadInTheBasement on faunaclassifieds.
2 Likes
Sunday I bought some springtails and isopods to get some colonies started. Nothing fancy, just something basic to get into isopod cultures. I got springtails, dwarf white isopods, and orange powder isopods. They’re easy beginner species and don’t require anything fancy, just substrate and decaying organic matter.
The first picture is the 6qt tubs I’m keeping them in, the next picture is my isopod colony, the third picture is my powder orange colony.
These are some pictures of my springtails, they were hard to get pictures of as they’re small, quick, and there’s not that many in the tub and they hate light.
These are my dwarf white isopods.
Orange powder isopods
Isopods in my bioactive, I think the first picture is a blue powder isopod and the second picture is blue powder isopods on the outside and a dwarf white isopod is in the middle.
6 Likes
zebra isopods. We also have the orangish and the plain gray as well. Only had them a few months so not sure what to expect. We have a ball python in there with them now but she’s coming out Of the tank and it’s just going to be for bugs n plants👍
9 Likes
Do they require anything special, or do they just need substrate and food? What do you give them for food? I’m hoping to get some zebra isopods coming up except unfortunately all of the expos have been canceled and I don’t want to have to pay for shipping.
1 Like
A lot of pet shops carry them. I believe the zebras were about $5 per individual insect. $40 for a tiny container with about 8 isopods. We’re new at these but there breeding and we just use Cichlid food, soil, leaves, moss mixed in the soil. The pet shop I went to has a lot of insects, reptiles frogs etc.
1 Like
Where I’m at there aren’t many pet stores nearby except the chain “pet” stores (petco, pet supplies, petsmart) and they only have mammal things and a few reptile supplies and live reptiles. At expos I can usually find a dozen zebra isopods for $25-$35. I was mainly wondering if they needed any supplements or minerals to survive or if they only needed substrate and decaying matter. I think it’d be awesome to be close to a pet store that has a lot of reptile things and has exotic reptiles and inverts.
It would be awesome if you submitted one of your invert pictures here
3 Likes
Supplements are helpful but not a necessity.
For a nice primer on them I recommend this episode of FtGU:
6 Likes
I live in Tennessee. I have seen these little guys here and we always have called them rolly polley bugs. Ours are grey color. My parents called them that too.
Would they be related to those isopods you have ?
3 Likes
All roly poly are isopods, but not all isopods are roly poly. They don’t all have the ability to curl into a ball. Those in the Armadillidium genus I believe are the ones that can curl onto a ball.
2 Likes
All the rolly polley I have seen since I was a kid roll up into a ball. We use to play with them all the time. I saw some not to long ago when I turned over a piece of wood. Never knew anyone would keep them as pets. Thats cool!
2 Likes
I bought some new isopods last week.
The first two are some zebra isopods, they’re doing great and I think I see some babies in there.
The third one is one of the species that came with my millipedes, I’m not sure what it is, any guesses?
5 Likes
Looks like a common pill bug to me.
3 Likes
5 Likes
Here are some of my dairy cows. What was 60 has ended up in me having hundreds 
I’m actually going to take out the higher whites to see if I can produce just higher whites 
7 Likes
And here’s some of our newest additions.
Panda kings! 
Every 100 babies or so they pop out albinos too! So will be taking all albino out produced to start just an albino line
We also have giant oranges, tropical greys and
Dwarf whites also.
Waiting on some others from a breeder when ready so will then add these on here too! He’s just getting them going breeding! But the other half managed to persuade him to sell some Panda Kings for me as I really liked them, so we have 11 for now!
10 Likes
I thought about getting dairy cows but I decided not to due to their low demand to sell (and they aren’t great for terrariums). The panda kings look similar to my rubber duckies (which I’ve recently set up a new tub for them, so they should be reproducing faster for me, I’ve moved about 20 or so of them). I’m considering getting them once I start selling my rubber duckies, how do you have their colony set up?
2 Likes
Dairy cows here are quite easy to sell here (uk) Though I’ve not sold any because I’m too attached… 
and they’re especially easy breed haha, though porcellio are amazing breeders. And I have them in vivs with my cresties and even in with the fat tails! The fat tails also have tropical grey and dwarf whites too.
Panda kings are the same family as rubber duckies, Cubaris! We are getting a few different types of duckies when the breeder has some ready! Also scaber lava and we’ve asked for a list on what else he has. Turns out we love our isopods, I’ve been feeding them tonight and just sat watching them 
I have the panda kings in a tub atm, they like higher humidity than the cows, and also warmer too, so got sphagnum moss and substrate in with them, and going to get white wood as they love it and also cuttle fish, crumble it like dust apparently and it’s great for them as need high calcium! They take more time to breed apparently so we shall see how they do here
They’re sat on the fat tails viv as with the heat lamp always on atm they’re nice and warm
3 Likes
This is so cool!
4 Likes
Where I live is next to a wooded lot (no pesticides used) and I usually collect and sterilize leaves myself. This year I got over 50 gallons of leaves and I can boil and bake (1hr for full cycle, though I can run 2 at once) them about 5-7 gallons at a time (so it might take over a month to finish the process assuming I can get 1-2 cycles done over each weekend). It should be worth it (my zebra isopods go through about an inch of leaf litter a week) and I might be able to sell/give away half of the leaves.
4 Likes
