Should I sterilize the soil before putting it in the enclosure???

[Nephaleim]

I'm changing the substrate for my A. Gigas millipedes.
This time I'll be using compost from my garden.

There are a lot of little critters inside. Millipedes, centipedes, ants, springtails, isopods, worms.

I tried to remove what I could and I'm preparing to sterilize the soil.

Should I sterilize the compost before putting it in my terrarium?? i feel so bad..

 

[ThemantismanofPA]

absolutely sterilize it. You never know what type of mold, microbes, etc. can be harmful to your millipedes in there.

 

[Nephaleim]

absolutely sterilize it. You never know what type of mold, microbes, etc. can be harmful to your millipedes in there.

Whats the best way to sterilize it using the oven? When i sterilized before, i still found mould and such happening. What temperature would destroy that? Would the nutrients in the soil be destroyed by heat?

 

[Zac0904]

What I do usually is I freeze the substrate in the freezer for 12-24 hours. Then take it out, let it sit for another 3-4 hours. Then shove it in the oven for around 20 mins.

after that, should be good to go. I do think its a bit of an overkill but I’d rather be safe than sorry.

 

[Dry Desert]

I'm changing the substrate for my A. Gigas millipedes.
This time I'll be using compost from my garden.

There are a lot of little critters inside. Millipedes, centipedes, ants, springtails, isopods, worms.

I tried to remove what I could and I'm preparing to sterilize the soil.

Should I sterilize the compost before putting it in my terrarium?? i feel so bad..

So you are quite happy to " nuke " all the millepedes, centipedes, ants worms and isopods so your millipede has nice substrate.

Bit of a Backwards move isn't
What's wrong with using organic topsoil - cheap enough.

 

[ArthropodLegs]

What I do usually is I freeze the substrate in the freezer for 12-24 hours. Then take it out, let it sit for another 3-4 hours. Then shove it in the oven for around 20 mins.

after that, should be good to go. I do think its a bit of an overkill but I’d rather be safe than sorry.

I’m new to raising and breeding millipedes, but I am an arthropod biologist (PhD in molecular biology, soon to be Professor), so I’ll give my two cents and hopefully not stick my foot in my mouth!

What I’ve gathered from reading here and The Millipede Enthusiasts Database, etc is that you want to kill any animals that might be in the substrate but not the bacteria and fungus. This is because if you actually sterilize a substrate (ie autoclave it at 250F and 20 psi for four hours like I was doing in the beginning!), then the substrate is a blank canvas for the first mold that lands on it to rapidly take over. So you don’t actually want to sterilize your substrate (ie kill absolutely every living cell in it), you instead want to only kill the spiders, isopods, and nematode worms etc that might harm your pedes. Since bacteria and fungus are much hardier than animals, relatively gentle extremes in temp should do it.

Freezing isn’t super effective, especially in locations that freeze even a little during the winter. For example, C elegans, the species of nematode worm used in research, is literally stored in the lab freezer because it can survive freezing without a hitch! But dry heat on the other hand is very effective, because there isn’t really any place on earth that gets up to 200F! There are scientific papers on heat tolerance in nematodes that infest crop plants (prob ecologically similar to the soil nematodes that would infest and kill millipedes), and the dry temp that kills the adults, the hardy infective stage larvae, and the egg cysts is 150F for something like 20 min. Nematodes are some of the hardiest animals out there, so if the nematodes are dead, it’s a pretty safe bet that all the other animals are dead too.

So from what I’ve read about how others are heat treating their substrate, a thin layer of substrate at 200F for 30 min should be enough to kill the animals but prob not the bacteria and fungus. But I would be interested to hear any other perspectives!

Exposure Time to Lethal Temperatures for Meloidogyne incognita Suppression and Its Implication for Soil Solarization - PMC

Meloidogyne incognita eggs or J2 were incubated in test tubes containing sand:peat mix and immersed in a water bath heated to 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44 and 45°C for a series of time intervals. Controls were maintained at 22°C. Nematodes surviving ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Nematode Management Guidelines--UC IPM

UC home and landscape guidelines for control of Nematodes.

ipm.ucanr.edu

 

[bjjpokemon910]

So you are quite happy to " nuke " all the millepedes, centipedes, ants worms and isopods so your millipede has nice substrate.

Bit of a Backwards move isn't
What's wrong with using organic topsoil - cheap enough.

lol the shade is real, but you are 100% right

 

[Zac0904]

I’m new to raising and breeding millipedes, but I am an arthropod biologist (PhD in molecular biology, soon to be Professor), so I’ll give my two cents and hopefully not stick my foot in my mouth!

What I’ve gathered from reading here and The Millipede Enthusiasts Database, etc is that you want to kill any animals that might be in the substrate but not the bacteria and fungus. This is because if you actually sterilize a substrate (ie autoclave it at 250F and 20 psi for four hours like I was doing in the beginning!), then the substrate is a blank canvas for the first mold that lands on it to rapidly take over. So you don’t actually want to sterilize your substrate (ie kill absolutely every living cell in it), you instead want to only kill the spiders, isopods, and nematode worms etc that might harm your pedes. Since bacteria and fungus are much hardier than animals, relatively gentle extremes in temp should do it.

Freezing isn’t super effective, especially in locations that freeze even a little during the winter. For example, C elegans, the species of nematode worm used in research, is literally stored in the lab freezer because it can survive freezing without a hitch! But dry heat on the other hand is very effective, because there isn’t really any place on earth that gets up to 200F! There are scientific papers on heat tolerance in nematodes that infest crop plants (prob ecologically similar to the soil nematodes that would infest and kill millipedes), and the dry temp that kills the adults, the hardy infective stage larvae, and the egg cysts is 150F for something like 20 min. Nematodes are some of the hardiest animals out there, so if the nematodes are dead, it’s a pretty safe bet that all the other animals are dead too.

So from what I’ve read about how others are heat treating their substrate, a thin layer of substrate at 200F for 30 min should be enough to kill the animals but prob not the bacteria and fungus. But I would be interested to hear any other perspectives!

Exposure Time to Lethal Temperatures for Meloidogyne incognita Suppression and Its Implication for Soil Solarization - PMC

Meloidogyne incognita eggs or J2 were incubated in test tubes containing sand:peat mix and immersed in a water bath heated to 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44 and 45°C for a series of time intervals. Controls were maintained at 22°C. Nematodes surviving ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Nematode Management Guidelines--UC IPM

UC home and landscape guidelines for control of Nematodes.

ipm.ucanr.edu

thanks man learnt a lot here.

 

[ArthropodLegs]

thanks man learnt a lot here.

You’re welcome

 

[The Snark]

is that you want to kill any animals that might be in the substrate but not the bacteria and fungus.

Stachybotrus chartarum spores have remained viable up to 350 C dry heat. Serious survivalists.

 

[ArthropodLegs]

Stachybotrus chartarum spores have remained viable up to 350 C dry heat. Serious survivalists.

Yeah mold is so crazy!

I found that autoclaving for the normal 30 min, and even for an hour, left some blue green mold on my mulch! Three hours with only a thin layer of mulch seemed to kill everything though, as far as I could tell. But who knows!

So I figure better to make them duke it out with each other to keep their numbers down instead of trying to kill ‘em to the last spore

 

[The Snark]

I found that autoclaving for the normal 30 min, and even for an hour, left some blue green mold on my mulch!

I've got algae growing in a UV sterilizer sight glass where it gets an hour or two of sunlight in the afternoons. Red tides, sudden blooms and no collecting shell fish during the months that don't have an R in their names - May, June, July and August. A virulent anaerobe outbreak in our hospital that played cat and mouse for three months, housekeeping going frantic with the sterilizing agents. We finally tracked it to a burn patient by doing a Sherlock Holmes investigation number with the path lab doing general counts to aid us in finding the source.

People are so woefully ignorant of micro-b, life cycles and natural balances. I had a bonus leg up working in a hospital and befriended by a preeminent Path doc who loved to tell me the little surprises mom nature has in store. Nuggets like on average a human contracts around 2000 diseases per day and eliminates them and that figure varies slightly - around 10,000% The open warfare in the human mouth where organisms employ the equivalent of lasers and explosives among other weapons.

And people think they are going to sterilize a containment? Or want a bio-active containment? Unless the containment is filled with 1% Benzalkonium Chloride solution or equivalent they already have one.


A funny one. My doc friend here eyed my filthy looking dressing on my finger, the wound still leaking blood, and told me to change the dressing. No chance. Take that dressing off and expose it to organisms? 'I soak the finger in 95% alcohol several times a day, doc'.

 

[Isopods others]

I would, an anecdotal story I didn't sterilise the substrate for my isopods and now I have earthworms zo it's best to