Flat Millipede Care

[pannaking22]

Could I see a photo of your Brachycybe enclosure, please? I have my Brachycybe in a 16 oz deli style container with a base of coir and fermented oak with pieces of wood of varying sizes on top. I keep the substrate very moist, wet even, but not water-logged. Fungi sprout from it regularly. However, I've been slowly losing them and there doesn't seem to be any correlation with age/size and I have no idea what the problem might be.

Thank you!

Sounds pretty similar to how I was keeping mine, though I think mine were almost purely on decaying oak, with a little bit of moss mixed in to hold humidity. What kind of ventilation are you giving them? I'll see if I can dig up a picture. I gave a bunch to a friend and sold the rest about a year ago, so I don't have them anymore (kicking myself about that too )

 

[ErinM31]

Sounds pretty similar to how I was keeping mine, though I think mine were almost purely on decaying oak, with a little bit of moss mixed in to hold humidity. What kind of ventilation are you giving them? I'll see if I can dig up a picture. I gave a bunch to a friend and sold the rest about a year ago, so I don't have them anymore (kicking myself about that too )

Adding some sphagnum moss sounds like a good idea. The ventilation is not excessive, just some pinholes around the lid and probably some around the upper part of the container itself although I'd have to check on that. Suffice it to say that the substrate stays quite moist without me having to add water.

Part of what strikes me as not right is that the millipedes appear to be mostly between the wall of the container and the substrate, rather than under any of the several wood pieces I added, despite moisture and fungal growth here and this being, I thought, their preferred microhabitat. Besides the fermented oak sawdust, most of the wood is decaying hickory (from which most of the fungi grows), which came from where they were found and was reportedly the preferred set-up when some were kept with this wood and some were kept with a mixture of oak and leaves. I feel there must be some variable I have gotten wrong or am missing. I briefly tried keeping them in the wine cooler (at 65F) but this did not seem to change their health nor behavior and slowed fungal growth so I keep them at room temperature (75-82F). Perhaps the substrate has become too dense for the millipedes to comfortable move through or under wood and mixing in some sphagnum moss will help?

Thank you for the info and if anything else comes to mind that I might be doing wrong or might try, please let me know! They are really beautiful millipedes, if only I can find the key to keeping them happy, healthy and even amorous!

 

[ErinM31]

Yikes! The substrate was saturated! I thought maybe they were climbing the walls to eat fungi or slime mold or whatever and then drying out but now I think they were also trying to escape drowning. I took everything out, added some moss and removed much of the coir/ground wood mix that now seemed more like mud and replaced it with some more pieces of wood that will hopefully support fungi. The millipedes now seem to be more naturally situated among the wood and substrate so hopefully I have solved the problem.