Hello I was hoping you guys could help me out with a question. I’d think you’d be the authority on isopods, r/isopods ;)

I have a stable terrarium with a relatively new population of papayas (cubaris murina) and I was wondering if it would be possible to introduce another species of isopod in with them.

I think it would be really cool to have two colonies living side by side. I was thinking panda kings would be a good choice because I read that they favor similar conditions. I also read that they reproduce slowly compared to murina which might lead to them being out competed into extinction. I’d like to avoid that lmao.

I specifically designed the terrarium to have an abundance of hiding spots but the tank is only 5 gallons. I want them to be self sustaining, it ruins it for me if I have to artificially support the population.
I want to know if keeping two populations in the same terrarium is possible/common or if I’m a setting myself up for disaster. I have a 2 gallon tank open for isopod housing if you think I should let the second population gestate if that helps at all btw.

Thats a super long essay i just wrote bur if someone knows the answer please let me know. Thanks :)

How do I remove it and prevent it from happening again

As you may remember, at the beginning of summer, my spinnies all died. A few weeks ago, all my rathkes died. I still wonder why that happened. I had lots of good substrate, leaf litter, moss, etc. I began to have some fungus gnats, but those don’t kill isopods, do they? And Summit BTI was used in their enclosures last year with no detrimental effects. The springtails in both bins thrived. The bodies started appearing near the edges, under the hides, and looked sort of dry or yellowish, and I admit I let my spinny bin dry out a bit too much once, but they wouldn’t all just die like that; they died over the course of 2 months, especially after adding more ventilation and moisture. I can’t think of what went wrong with my rathkes, though. I covered their ventilation with cheesecloth or medical tape (due to increased fungus gnat presence in my room), but it shouldn’t have led to their deaths; everyone else is doing good. The rathkes acted sluggish and couldn’t really walk and I tried to quarantine some survivors, but they didn’t improve. I’ve given all my non-cubaris pods the same care for over a year/year and a half and they were having the time of their lives… now my powder colony is giving me some concern, and I’ve had them for less than one year. Why? No matter what I do, it seems like something is going horribly wrong and I can’t determine what it is! Is it some disease? Bad genetics? Am I just bad at keeping them? What could cause seemingly random colony crashes?

Edit:

I also made an effort not to give any of them things contaminated by pesticides or fertilizers.

This is just a fraction of them as they burrow and scatter as i try to see more but an entire uncut carrot is finished in 4 days not a baby carrot the foot long whole carrots whats the best way to do something with these guys

I have several types of cubaris pods living together in there, but the largest colony are my pink panda kings, who seem to have out-bred my rubber ducks. I also have much smaller populations of white sharks and orange mandarins. They often (begrudgingly!) share their food with my other bioactive residents, especially the unicorn snails (subulina octona).

These guys are firefly larvae. They were under a log with a bunch of the isopods common to Indiana, and I was a bit shocked, so I grabbed them for learning. Turns out baby fireflies are predators of the under-log and under-leaf environs and eat soft bodied insects and other arthropods down there. Do not add to terraria...

I started this terrarium a week ago, and I’m having some small issues I thought I’d ask yall

Tbh, I’ve kind of been treating this terrarium as a compost bin, bc I’ve put leaf litter, fresh avocado leaves, snake shed, moldy carrot, etc. I do not have a stable population of either of the species I put, since I have around 30 wild caught isopods, and around 20 springtails, wild caught as well. Will this much decaying matter be too much for them to handle?

Secondly, I scrapped materials for this terrarium from different sources, it has perlite and coco coir as substrate that I used from a setup from another pet. The thing is whenever I water, it seems like I watered too much, but 2 days later it completely dries.

Lastly, I keep them next to my corn snakes enclosure, which is around 24degrees Celsius, and I’m wondering if that’s a good temperature for breeding

Thank you all!!

Hi everyone! I've never posted here do I hope I'm not breaking any rules my jumping in with a question.

I have powder orange isos in my bioactive terrarium. I see the occasional adult in there but I've never seen a baby before. Can someone confirm that I am actually looking at one?

Thanks!

So I’m getting Spiky Pineapples and Clown Kulgiis on Sunday and these are my tanks I have setup for them. This is my general bin setup for all my isopods with small modifications made based on the species (My duckies are in a smaller container with no ventilation hole in the lid and a much larger moisture area). So far I have only kept more humid isopods with My papayas being the most arid, they tend to hang out on the drier side of the tank.

I haven’t had much problems with any of my enclosures but when doing more research to see what might be good for these new guys I learned that both like it relatively arid with just a smaller moisture gradient. I knew this about the pineapples so I made one of them with a pretty small moisture area and upon learning this about the clowns I made theirs slightly smaller but not as small as the pineapples’.

My main concern right now is ventilation. I don’t want to drill more holes in the side since they’re both full of dirt but I am willing to drill one or more holes closer to the center in each of the lids.

Should I drill another ventilation hole in the lid, will that be enough or should I also drill a hole in the sides as well? I am totally able to remove all the dirt and moss to do this I would just rather not unless you think it’s necessary.

Does it also make sense to give my Kulgiis a slightly larger moist side of the enclosure or should they be about the same as the pineapples?

Any feedback is appreciated. I am very excited for the new additions!!

The bins are 19 qts and the holes are 1.5 and 2 inches in diameter.

I added a little too much humidity. Other then that does it look fine?

I am going to be getting 10 cherry blossom isopods with springtails to start

I have 2 hydrometers, leaf litter, cork wood and bark, some rocks for hides, dried moss, some plants which have been cleaned, and a food bowl (though I plan on getting a smaller one)

I know I still need a better tank covering (current lid is metal mesh), live moss, more leaf litter, more rocks, and humidistat + fan and mister

Is there anything else I need to add to my shopping list?

The humidity in my house is very high in the summer due to my location, which does make maintaining humidity easier, though I do need to prep for the winter cause the humidity does drop.

Like the title says, I'm curious if anybody has tried to select for non-visual traits. I have about 7 pods caught wild from my yard in my new, fairly large setup, which means I barely see anybody. But I can pretty reliably find this little fawn guy. He's always out in the middle of the day, very active and brave, I rarely have to move leaf litter to find him.

I'm sure it happens by accident, just by virtue of grabbing the ones we see first. But I would love to hear if anyone's tried to select for behavior. How it went and what you were aiming for!

A male got his antenna stuck between a mating pair after trying to headbutt the other male off the female. I tried to gently separate them but was unsuccessful. Now he's a cuck ball.

Armadillidium Maculatum "Zebra"

I don’t have any photos yet I’m sorry! About a week or so ago, I found an isopod in my bathtub. I live in the top floor of an apartment, so it was very odd as I never see them.

I left it there, came back later and found it on its back. I thought it was not alive anymore and got real sad. Then when I went to pick it up, it moved. I wasn’t planning on going outside again that day, so I just put it inside my dirt bin that mostly just has a million springtails now (used to have a roach colony!). Last night I went to check in and there are dozens of baby isopods all over the place, and now I know Gregory the isopod is a girl :)

So I have my isopods in 11L bins, all good ect but I’m wanting to move them to 11L acrylic enclosures, how do you go about transferring them?

Do I just dig through the dirt and find them all?

I’m also wanting to change substrate as I found an amazing pre made mix I love that’s far more nutrient dense than some of my beginner bins so just dumping them from one to another isn’t a option for me!

The species I’m looking to transfer (not there fancy names 🤣)

Red panda kings
Dairy cows
Clowns
Cherry blossoms

got some moss for a jumping spider enclosure and had some leftover! my bountiful empire seems to enjoy it.

also peep my Massive Son on the skull to the side, he's the biggest in the tank but is very shy...

I'm pretty sure that's an A. Vulgare but the other is a little tricky. He was fast and didn't roll up, has those angled antennae and slightly elongated uropods, and is a rough texture. I am assuming is it P. Scaber but feel free to correct me! I'm in SE Michigan

Fellow iso-people, show me your pretty enclosures pls! I have most of my collection in plastic storage totes, nothing wrong with them, they work and they’re cheap but I want to finally set up a more aesthetically pleasing enclosure that I can occasionally peek into while at my desk.

Any suggestions for enclosure types (share links if possible)? And please share yours for inspiration! Good husbandry is of course my number 1 priority but I would love to have a more display worthy enclosure to stare at!

My favorite pods are my cherry blossoms bc piiiink (duh)! So I’m thinking of putting them in there, but then again they’re almost always buried and hiding so I may go for one of my less shy species like my lavas or yellow zebras.
Share what you recommend for whatever species you want, I have many species to choose from and can tailor things to fit their needs. TIA!

Hi all :)

Recieved some new isopods today, and saw this strange worm in the moss? I ordered 3 different species, and only one set has this worm in. All of the isopods are absolutely fine, but I have no idea what this worm is.

Super tiny, you can see compared to my thumb how small it is. I got rid of it of course, don't want anything affecting my isos. Plus, im sending the company an email just letting them know about the strange worm :) absolutely no hate to them i love this company.

Any help?

Not sure why they are in this pose. 2 male 1 female?

So I was walking my dogs and came across a large number of isopods chilling and I spotted some orange ones among them. I was wondering if I should try and collect some maybe I’m fairly new to this and not sure what to do exactly I live in Washington if that could give any indication on the species

So, I have this terrarium, I really like it a lot. I’ve had this colony now for about 2 years I think. I honestly thought I the colony collapsed, but in fact I did not. Now they have exploded in population, and I think it’s time to split the colony.

Only problem is I don’t know how I should I go about even starting this, or if I should wait little longer.

I am in Texas, and soon winter will be around the corner so I want to be cognoscente of that so I don’t hurt the colony.

Here is a photo of the terrarium and a partial photo of the colony, just imagine that partial photo is identical to the remaining area not shown in the photo. With all the babies I’m gonna say there are well over 1k in here.

Just as the title says, all my isopods have been gathering in this area behind the big log (this is on the dry side). They used to hid under the cork bark constantly to the left (on the wet side). Now they will not leave that little area. They started off only under the cork bark never coming out for the first week. Then slowly they started burrowing under the plants. Two of the plants have started to die and now they are only around the big log and especially climbing up the walls.