Decomposition Vivarium

EulersK

Arachnonomicon
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Feb 22, 2013
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3,292
Alright, I've been maintaining a colony of springtails and isopods for a couple months now, and I have fallen in love. What I got as a cleanup crew for my spiders has turned into something I actually enjoy! And, of course, browsing the classifieds didn't help - @DITB has some specimens for sale that I wouldn't mind adding to what I already have going.

I am beyond a greenhorn in this. I wouldn't even know where to begin researching. I have a 10gal aquarium that I'd like to set up with a live plant and plenty of detrivores and possibly mushrooms.

Other than humidity concerns, are there certain isopods/springtails/millipedes that can't be kept together? Are there plants that I should stay away from or look for specifically? What type of soil should I be looking at? I currently have mine on 50/50 topsoil and sphagnum mix, and they seem to be thriving. I'm sure that I'm not asking the right questions... I don't know what I don't know, after all.

One last thing. I do maintain a B. dubia colony (several, actually) and fruit flies have become a constant worry for me. Enough that I had to change the substrate on all of my tarantulas to a peat moss mix to keep them from breeding in there. Is there a way to avoid this in the vivarium? Can heavy peat moss be used, even though it increases the acidity to the point that flies can reproduce?

As always, thank you for any help this corner of the site can offer :)
 
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sdsnybny

Arachnogeek
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Apr 29, 2015
Messages
1,330
Glad you love the P. scaber orange morphs. Are they breeding good for you?

 

RTTB

Arachnoprince
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Dec 4, 2016
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1,771
Bugs In Cyberspace has some neat species you may like.
 

EulersK

Arachnonomicon
Staff member
Joined
Feb 22, 2013
Messages
3,292
Glad you love the P. scaber orange morphs. Are they breeding good for you?

Very nice video, thank you. Perhaps I need to invest in a bag of leaf litter.

Yeah, those are doing great. The springtails are doing better, though. I could hardly find any in that culture you sent me, but they're already absolutely everywhere in my culture. They breed like rabbits. They've also completely solved my mold problem in the T enclosures, so mission accomplished there. The P. scaber's seem to breed quite slowly, and I'm still trying to figure out what to feed them. Turns out they love tarantula exuvia, but it's not like I have a million of those lying around.

Bugs In Cyberspace has some neat species you may like.
I'm not sure if this is reasonable, but I'd like to have a large population of microfauna going with just 3-5 large millipedes in an enclosure. At the end of the day, this will still serve as my seeding culture for my tarantulas. I just think that it would be fun to have this going on the side.
 
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