iguanasaurus
Arachnopeon
- Joined
- May 15, 2019
- Messages
- 17
In fall 2019 I got my hands on 6 Giant African Millipedes. I had been wanting to keep the largest millipede species for a while and chanced a connection with someone on a message board who lived in my state. I was thrilled and excited! Look how little and cute they were. I wouldn't discover until 2022 that there is in fact a difference between African Giant Black millipedes and Giant African Millipedes, and thought the names were interchangeable.
It was my first time keeping any arthropod and I wanted to monitor their growth. So every couple of months I'd dig them up and measure them. Until I dug up one that had just molted... I know, I know better now. Luckily it didn't seem any harm had come to them. And so for several months everyone was happy and healthy.
In 2020, covid happened. I was living in a houseshare with several strangers and wanted to get out of there. I started staying at my partner's studio with millipedes in tow in a small carrier, thinking the stay would be temporary. I noticed a lot of frass was building up, the isopods and springtails weren't keeping up with cleanup, and I decided that the substrate needed replacing. I purchased some "shredded rotten wood" millipede substrate on Etsy that sounded promising--boiled and baked shredded hardwood. It arrived very very wet, almost dripping, but I thought nothing of it and replaced the old substrate with it. The pedes seemed to love it! They were very active and munching voraciously. Then they started dying.
In 4 weeks I lost all but one millipede. I still don't know for sure what caused the die off. I threw out the new substrate after the 2nd one died but they continued to perish. My standing theory is the sudden change to the very wet substrate in hot weather, in a small enclosure caused too high temperatures. It was late summer, the studio was the top floor of an old building and the AC was shoddy, consistently over 80F in the room and I imagine even higher in the small enclosure. I was devastated.
By fall 2021 we had moved into a new apartment and I set up a 5 gallon terrarium for Ms. Peeda. She had been one of the smaller babies and had grown so much! My little survivor. I contacted the person who originally sold me the pedes and bashfully explained what had happened and that I was interested in purchasing more. They said their colony wasn't reproducing as much in the past years for whatever reason, but were willing to sell me a couple females as they had very few males. Though I had wanted to breed the millipedes eventually, I was very grateful just to add to the collection. Also there was a chance they had already been mated.
Last weekend, I came home with 2 new Giant African Millipedes. They were both ~5" with Peeda being closer to 7". Here they are before being released into the 5 gallon:
View attachment PXL_20220820_015717563.mp4
I put Peeda in first, then one of the new females, who made a beeline for Peeda and started crawling on top of her. I grew a bit concerned and was considering separating them when it looked like Peeda CHOMPED into the neck of the smaller one, which then wrapped itself into a tight coil around Peeda. I was horrified especially when I saw white liquid (that I thought was blood) oozing from what I thought was the bite wound. Neither was moving. Yes, I know you all know what was actually happening.... At the time I thought I had killed another millipede and put my precious Peeda in danger. I hadn't read anything about millipede territoriality, but given I was told they were all female, didn't think it was mating. I was thinking the worst.
After 30 minutes of frantic Googling I finally became comfortable with the idea that I did in fact receive at least one male. After they separated an hour later, totally uninjured, I saw that the smaller pede did in fact have little stubs on the underside of the 7th segment indicating male parts. I haven't checked whether the other new pede is actually a male or not.
I read on here that isopods can eat millipede eggs, so I've moved Peeda into a separate tank as I have dwarf white isopods in the 5 gallon. All parties are behaving normally after the excitement of the weekend and I'm looking forward to new developments!