JBUSN1990
Arachnopeon
- Joined
- Apr 7, 2020
- Messages
- 8
Raising and breeding them is not easy, but still some success. Photos below is another species I have had success with and the WF1 are now adults.
First, they cannot withstand high temperatures. For low-altitude species (like most Zephroniidae in Thailand that you mentioned), 30 degrees Celsius is already quite fatal. For high-altitude species( like Zoosphaerium neptunus, more than 1100m), as long as they stay above 25 degrees for an hour, they can no longer digest food normally and can only starve to death.
For foreign species that come from afar, most of them have already experienced high temperatures of over 30 degrees Celsius during transportation (think about when they are in the car!), so I don't recommend you to buy those non domestic pill millipedes.
They need a stable environment, and the bedding should be litter with high humus content, such as rotten oak leaves or decayed wood flake. A small spoonful of calcium containing substances such as limestone powder or eggshell powder should be added to each liter of humus - the shell of a millipede requires a large amount of calcium.
The humidity of humus should be maintained at the level where it is not dripping when you grip it in your hand, and It won't completely disperse after letting go, like what beetles like. That is, moist but no liquid water. The young cannot tolerate drying or drown, so the air conditioner cannot blow directly into the breeding container. Otherwise, the uneven temperature will cause the water vapor in the container to condense on the colder side, and all the young on the dry side will dry out, and the wet side will drown.
The small and medium-sized(adult 2~4cm) species do not require too high ventilation levels. Generally speaking, one week after spraying water, the surface of the mat can be re dried, which is enough.
They need no additional feeding at all and feed entirely on humus like decayed wood and rotten leaves, which is the bedding material we should provide. If you want, you can also feed non-toxic edible fungi occasionally. Such as oyster mushrooms.
The most important is that their reproduction requires【enough thickness(5cm or more in most cases) of their own feces】, this is determined by their egg laying method: They lie with their stomachs facing up in their own fecal pile, use their legs to grab the feces above them, and bury the eggs inside, which can enable the newborn to obtain crucial gut microbiota.
This breeding pattern is undoubtedly very strange to humans, but pill millipedes often inhabit only a fixed area in the wild - for example, around the same valley - for decades. So the soil in their habitat is filled with their own kind of feces, they never lack feces in the wild. Unfortunately, it took humans decades to unravel this secret, and only a few papers have discussed this unique reproductive method. I happened to see an individual laying eggs on the side wall of a container and was fortunate to know all about it.
So, the bedding material cannot be changed frequently, so feces can accumulate.
Besides, for 3~4cm species, the diameter of newborns usually does not exceed 2mm, it is almost invisible (you can refer to the picture!), If you change the bedding, you will often have to find small and fragile newborns from the "sea of feces" one by one --considering that each female can give birth to hundreds of newborns and eggs are in feces(completely invisible), believe me, this is a epic vision challenge you wouldn't want to experience again.
You can use a taller container and when the food is used up, add new food on top without turning, until the container is full. As long as the container is large enough, you just need to change the bedding material in more than once a year, giving the pups plenty of time to hatch and grow.
But sometimes, feces accumulate toooooo thick(more than 20cm in most cases), the lower layer does not receive enough oxygen, anaerobic fermentation will occur. The main feature of this thing is that the bedding turns yellow on a large area and emits a foul odor (of course, the odor is something you can only smell when you open it) .
When you observe this, you should strengthen the ventilation of the container and carefully remove the top 5~10cm bedding with millipedes inside, roughly search for the lower level individuals, then discard all yellowed parts below and replace the top layer that was just removed--As long as you gradually add new leaves layer by layer as I said, most individuals (including the young) will gather with the food upwards (because the lower layer lacks food, its all feces), the top 10cm will contain the vast majority of individuals, so even if the lower layer lacks oxygen, because most individuals are in the upper layer, the losses are usually small.
Of course, even nothing happed, you can use this method when the container is full.
They usually breed only once a year, with the incubation period lasting several months, and the young taking about three years to grow into adults. Adults can live for more than 4 years, and I believe the limit can be much longer, maybe 10+ years in total. Since they are all great eaters, you may have to bear a large electricity and food bill, but overall they do not require a lot of care.
This is just my personal experience, there may be mistakes. Welcome everyone to communicate with me!
See the white dot in front of my finger? This is a little baby that has recently emerged from feces, F2. Newborn is even smaller.
Adults from Changjiang, Hainan, China
Baby, 8 segment, more than the newborns, but the adults have 13.
First, they cannot withstand high temperatures. For low-altitude species (like most Zephroniidae in Thailand that you mentioned), 30 degrees Celsius is already quite fatal. For high-altitude species( like Zoosphaerium neptunus, more than 1100m), as long as they stay above 25 degrees for an hour, they can no longer digest food normally and can only starve to death.
For foreign species that come from afar, most of them have already experienced high temperatures of over 30 degrees Celsius during transportation (think about when they are in the car!), so I don't recommend you to buy those non domestic pill millipedes.
They need a stable environment, and the bedding should be litter with high humus content, such as rotten oak leaves or decayed wood flake. A small spoonful of calcium containing substances such as limestone powder or eggshell powder should be added to each liter of humus - the shell of a millipede requires a large amount of calcium.
The humidity of humus should be maintained at the level where it is not dripping when you grip it in your hand, and It won't completely disperse after letting go, like what beetles like. That is, moist but no liquid water. The young cannot tolerate drying or drown, so the air conditioner cannot blow directly into the breeding container. Otherwise, the uneven temperature will cause the water vapor in the container to condense on the colder side, and all the young on the dry side will dry out, and the wet side will drown.
The small and medium-sized(adult 2~4cm) species do not require too high ventilation levels. Generally speaking, one week after spraying water, the surface of the mat can be re dried, which is enough.
They need no additional feeding at all and feed entirely on humus like decayed wood and rotten leaves, which is the bedding material we should provide. If you want, you can also feed non-toxic edible fungi occasionally. Such as oyster mushrooms.
The most important is that their reproduction requires【enough thickness(5cm or more in most cases) of their own feces】, this is determined by their egg laying method: They lie with their stomachs facing up in their own fecal pile, use their legs to grab the feces above them, and bury the eggs inside, which can enable the newborn to obtain crucial gut microbiota.
This breeding pattern is undoubtedly very strange to humans, but pill millipedes often inhabit only a fixed area in the wild - for example, around the same valley - for decades. So the soil in their habitat is filled with their own kind of feces, they never lack feces in the wild. Unfortunately, it took humans decades to unravel this secret, and only a few papers have discussed this unique reproductive method. I happened to see an individual laying eggs on the side wall of a container and was fortunate to know all about it.
So, the bedding material cannot be changed frequently, so feces can accumulate.
Besides, for 3~4cm species, the diameter of newborns usually does not exceed 2mm, it is almost invisible (you can refer to the picture!), If you change the bedding, you will often have to find small and fragile newborns from the "sea of feces" one by one --considering that each female can give birth to hundreds of newborns and eggs are in feces(completely invisible), believe me, this is a epic vision challenge you wouldn't want to experience again.
You can use a taller container and when the food is used up, add new food on top without turning, until the container is full. As long as the container is large enough, you just need to change the bedding material in more than once a year, giving the pups plenty of time to hatch and grow.
But sometimes, feces accumulate toooooo thick(more than 20cm in most cases), the lower layer does not receive enough oxygen, anaerobic fermentation will occur. The main feature of this thing is that the bedding turns yellow on a large area and emits a foul odor (of course, the odor is something you can only smell when you open it) .
When you observe this, you should strengthen the ventilation of the container and carefully remove the top 5~10cm bedding with millipedes inside, roughly search for the lower level individuals, then discard all yellowed parts below and replace the top layer that was just removed--As long as you gradually add new leaves layer by layer as I said, most individuals (including the young) will gather with the food upwards (because the lower layer lacks food, its all feces), the top 10cm will contain the vast majority of individuals, so even if the lower layer lacks oxygen, because most individuals are in the upper layer, the losses are usually small.
Of course, even nothing happed, you can use this method when the container is full.
They usually breed only once a year, with the incubation period lasting several months, and the young taking about three years to grow into adults. Adults can live for more than 4 years, and I believe the limit can be much longer, maybe 10+ years in total. Since they are all great eaters, you may have to bear a large electricity and food bill, but overall they do not require a lot of care.
This is just my personal experience, there may be mistakes. Welcome everyone to communicate with me!
See the white dot in front of my finger? This is a little baby that has recently emerged from feces, F2. Newborn is even smaller.
Adults from Changjiang, Hainan, China
Baby, 8 segment, more than the newborns, but the adults have 13.
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