I’m worried - strange a.gigas behaviour

korvuskoracx

Arachnopeon
Joined
Jul 9, 2020
Messages
5
Today I found my millipede rolling her first half of the body into a spiral and rapidly narrowing herself again with really sharp movements while making a loud scracthing noise.
Everything in her enclosure seems okay, the temperature is fine, she has a place to hide under and plenty of food, I even boil the water before spraying it into her enclosure to minimize the amount of chlorine, though the humidity was a little higher (84%) for this one moment, but overall, the humidity is around 74%. The millipede doesn’t have anything wrong with her body. I didn’t scare her either, the lights were out and I was on the other side of the room. I’m new to keeping inverts, this is my first pet millipede and I’ve never seen or heard about anything like this. I’m worried about her, can you please tell me what could it be?
 

korvuskoracx

Arachnopeon
Joined
Jul 9, 2020
Messages
5
Today I found my millipede rolling her first half of the body into a spiral and rapidly narrowing herself again with really sharp movements while making a loud scracthing noise.
Everything in her enclosure seems okay, the temperature is fine, she has a place to hide under and plenty of food, I even boil the water before spraying it into her enclosure to minimize the amount of chlorine, though the humidity was a little higher (84%) for this one moment, but overall, the humidity is around 74%. The millipede doesn’t have anything wrong with her body. I didn’t scare her either, the lights were out and I was on the other side of the room. I’m new to keeping inverts, this is my first pet millipede and I’ve never seen or heard about anything like this. I’m worried about her, can you please tell me what could it be?
I just found a video of an ivory millipede doing the same thing, it's not an indiccator of bad health. So I suppose that african giant millipedes do the same? I just got really scared, because they look like eels suffering a toxic shock.
 

Arthroverts

Arachnoking
Joined
Jul 11, 2016
Messages
2,462
You mean prolonged periods where they writhe like eels as you said? I have a Spirostreptidae sp. “8” that does something similar at times with apparently no ill effects.

Don’t so much measure humidity as soil moisture, as the latter is much more important; you can have perfect humidity and still have specimens die if the soil isn’t moist.
Just to be safe, what does your enclosure look like? Temperature, substrate, foods offered, etc.

Hope this helps,

Arthroverts
 

korvuskoracx

Arachnopeon
Joined
Jul 9, 2020
Messages
5
You mean prolonged periods where they writhe like eels as you said? I have a Spirostreptidae sp. “8” that does something similar at times with apparently no ill effects.

Don’t so much measure humidity as soil moisture, as the latter is much more important; you can have perfect humidity and still have specimens die if the soil isn’t moist.
Just to be safe, what does your enclosure look like? Temperature, substrate, foods offered, etc.

Hope this helps,

Arthroverts
Thank you for the reply.
She didn’t do it for too long, as soon as she stopped flailing like that, she started to walk around the enclosure as usual. For the soil humidity, I always check it’s colour. I use cocofiber, without any other ingredient. I feed her apple tree and cherry tree leaves plus vegetable and fruit, mostly cucumbers and bananas. Now that I’m able to get some pieces of bark, I’ll add it into the substrate. 116EDF07-B528-4C4A-A195-CA708648190E.jpeg 4982B146-6576-47D4-B285-DAA0E1DEF64E.jpeg
 

Arthroverts

Arachnoking
Joined
Jul 11, 2016
Messages
2,462
I would say, with as much as we know about this, it is probably normal behavior, but for what purpose I don't know.

Your overall setup looks fine, but I'd like to quote my friend @MadMilli here on what coco fiber is to millipedes:
"I don’t recommend adding more than 20% EcoEarth [coco fiber] to your substrate mix. It’s really more of a burrow holder / humidity gauge and base to the rest of the substrate. Think of EcoEarth as a bowl to hold your cereal. It’s unlikely that you’d simply take a bowl out of the cabinet and start chewing on that. Even if you did, the nutrition is nothing. That’s exactly what EcoEarth is."
You cannot use coco fiber as the sole substrate and have healthy millipedes long-term. I would suggest taking a look at the links below to get an idea of what a proper millipede substrate looks like and to see the dangers of a coco fiber-only substrate.


Thanks,

Arthroverts
 
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