New Isopod Colony Questions

Invertebrates Isopods
,
1

Ok so I decided to restart my colony. Some fat hairy old man (me) didn’t care for the old one enough. Anyway, I got a bunch in yesterday. I got some Zebras, orange dalmatians, giant canyons, white outs and dairy cows. I put them in the same box as the old colony. It’s got a lot of leaf litter on top, some old wood and sphagnum moss mixed into it. I misted it down pretty good. I fed them some tropical fish flakes.

Now I need the expert knowledge here on how to get them to thrive and explode in numbers.

1 Like
2

Are they all together?
As you’ll get hybrids if so and eventually some will thrive more than others with the others dying off.

My dairy cows are in a big tub with substrate, sphagnum moss, leaf litter, orchid bark, hides etc. And fed turtle food as they love the shrimp.

That’s it. That’s all I’ve every done and they went mad and now I have too many :sweat_smile:

We also have giant orange, tropical grey and dwarf whites. But these are thriving and breeding in a few vivs.
The reason I have dairy cows separate is because I’m changing a lot of vivs and eventually only want dairy cows in all of my Crestie vivs as they’re my fav :grin:

3

Yes they are all in a pretty big tub.

4

I would separate them into 6 qt tubs since the dairy cows will likely end up outcompeting the others since they’re highly food motivated and reproduce quickly.

2 Likes
5

It’d keep them all separate, dairy cows can be especially voracious from what I’ve heard

6

That’s why I was asking!
I wouldn’t want hybrids etc anyway. Although dairy cows and giant oranges make some cool babies haha.
The bigger will do better and the smaller will die off!

Every type we’ve owned has done amazing but I’ve found dairy cows have gone mental! I brought 60 and have hundreds now :joy:
I put god knows how many into a viv yesterday and still they’re everywhere! Haha

7

I have never seen one, do they really look cool?

8

They basically get some pale orange on them too.
I may make some for fun actually. Will try dig some of the oranges out :sweat_smile:

1 Like
9

Yeah they are in a pretty wide and long tub, but not really deep. I’ll try to dig the dairy cows out and get them something else.

Although an orange dairy cow DOES sound pretty cool!

1 Like
10

Well it’s all null and void anyway it appears. This is the box I had them in. I’ve spent the last 15 minutes combing through it.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. No idea what happened to ALL 40 of them.

Yep, gonna be a great day.

16288742299971156112607647692160
16288742299971156112607647692160462×711 137 KB

1 Like
11

I had a small (6 qt) millipede colony that I went through handful by handful to dig out millipedes since I found out that they wouldn’t breed with isopods in the tub. I had 2 tubs and I took out everything little by little, it was time consuming but it worked.

2 Likes
12

Hi, if you haven’t already, you can try to feed protein-rich foods on the surface and most will rush out to eat within a few hours when you can scoop them up.

13

Hey thanks for the reply. I’ve moved over to small, individual colonies and have been quite successful.

And you are right about that. I’ve done some of that in enclosures to remove individuals for new colonies in new enclosures.

2 Likes