# Springtail "Food"?



## grimmjowls (May 23, 2016)

Has anyone experimented with different "food" items and substrate for their springtail colonies? 

The most common combination I find is charcoal for the substrate, and rice for the food. 

My first was cocofiber and mandarins for the food. The colony is doing great and the population keeps increasing despite a few seedings with it. 

My second was charcoal and rice, with a few pieces of mandarins because I wasn't sure the rice would mold. It did, but also... I've got sprouts coming out of the rice now! The colony hasn't been doing as great as I had hoped. I will give it some time to see if it explodes in population eventually. 

I just started a third one with cocofiber and rice.

Does anyone have any input?


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## sdsnybny (May 23, 2016)

Mine absolutely love a slice of yellow zucchini, any mushroom, and I also use rice but in the form of Gerber  flavored baby food, they eat it up.
I didn't know they would eat citrus? any citrus work?


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## Aquarimax (May 23, 2016)

grimmjowls said:


> Has anyone experimented with different "food" items and substrate for their springtail colonies?
> 
> The most common combination I find is charcoal for the substrate, and rice for the food.
> 
> Does anyone have any input?


I use a charcoal substrate, brewer's/nutritional yeast for food, with an occasional pinch of calcium powder. The colonies do great this way. I very occasionally offer a small piece of juicy fruit such as watermelon, but over 95% of their food is brewer's yeast.


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## Harlequin (May 25, 2016)

What kind of springtails do you have? I've never had springtails do well on charcoal. They'll persist, but not flourish. In my experience, most types of soil-dwelling springtails do very well in coir substrate with varying levels of moisture, depending upon the species. I keep my folsomia in 100% coir substrate with enough distilled water to stand in the bottom of the container. Other springtails prefer drier conditions. It just depends upon what you have.
Coir also aids in harvesting colonies. Since it's more dense than water, all you need to do is submerse it and skim off the springtails.

As far as food, I've not yet seen a springtail that wouldn't eat baker's yeast as an emergency food source or as a supplement. Don't give too much to air-tight containers, though, because it'll generate toxic levels of CO2 and completely kill off a springtail colony. As a staple food source for my soil springtails, I use a 50/50 mix of brown rice flour and bean flour (chick pea flour, specifically). That offers a nice mix of carbs, proteins, and trace minerals. I bought a bag of each in the organic section of Kroger, and it lasts forever if kept in the freezer. I just dust it on the surface of the coir every few days and watch the colonies explode.

Now if you have a wood-dwelling, surface-dwelling, or foliage-dwelling springtail, they're quite a bit different. But since you're already keeping them on charcoal, I'm assuming you have a soil-dwelling species.

Hope this helps!

Reactions: Like 1 | Informative 1


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## Aquarimax (May 28, 2016)

Harlequin said:


> As a staple food source for my soil springtails, I use a 50/50 mix of brown rice flour and bean flour (chick pea flour, specifically). That offers a nice mix of carbs, proteins, and trace minerals. I bought a bag of each in the organic section of Kroger, and it lasts forever if kept in the freezer. I just dust it on the surface of the coir every few days and watch the colonies explode!


What type of coir fiber do you use--the finely ground kind, or the chunkier stuff? My springtails do really well in my millipede enclosures on a coco fiber/wood/leaf substrate.

Have you ever had trouble with mites on the rice flour/chickpea flour diet? I am tempted to try it.


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## Harlequin (May 31, 2016)

Aquarimax said:


> What type of coir fiber do you use--the finely ground kind, or the chunkier stuff? My springtails do really well in my millipede enclosures on a coco fiber/wood/leaf substrate.
> 
> Have you ever had trouble with mites on the rice flour/chickpea flour diet? I am tempted to try it.


Sorry for the late reply. I've been off the grid over the weekend.

I use the ground type of coir, the type like you can buy in a compressed brick. I've tried the larger chunks. It works, but the limited surface area isn't as good for soil species. By contrast, that's what I use for Entomobryids and surface-dwelling springtails, and it works well for them.

If there are grain mites in the media, then yes, the flour diet will cause them to bloom. But if the springtail culture is purified and free of mites, I've never had trouble with it. If there is a good population of springtails, it doesn't last very long anyway unless overfed. I usually have to feed every 2-3 days. Also, make sure to keep the flour in the freezer, or else mites (and other inverts) may contaminate the food itself.

Reactions: Informative 1


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## jaredc (Jun 6, 2016)

I had a roach enclosure where I put a few pieces of cat food in one corner, and my silver springtail population exploded to an unmanageable degree. They're a bit of a nuisance in my tanks now because of their prolific nature and the fact that they will eat anything readily before my roaches can get to it.


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## Jacob Ma (Jun 7, 2016)

I throw any kind of food that has some mold growth on it to the springtails.  They swarm over the mold, and I sometimes drop a few in the roach enclosures to prevent some mold growth.


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