I just have to let you know how insanely valuable you are to this community. I was interested in isopods years ago but couldn't get any at the time. Last week, I went to a local pet shop, saw they had a ton of containers, full of isopods, half of them dead, dry as bone substrate, and the lids were all sealed. I bought them all (at a 75% discount thankfully) and get to work. Now, they're eating voraciously, coming out every time I mist, and I think I see eggs underneath one. This is all possibly because of your videos. Thank you for your massive contribution to the hobby.
I put egg shells in a toaster oven and let them brown a little. This acts as a feeding stimulant. They eat them quickly and more vigorously if they are toasted.
Eggshells are a wonder for me, i use some shards of eggshells as a small "plate" for the isopod's fish flakes or pieces of fresh vegetablesto prevent mold on the substrate
I use primarily egg shells. I have a friend who has chickens and other birds. They use the egg shells themselves, but is also more than willing to give me some when I need it. I also keep the egg shells from eggs my husband and I consume for them too. My friend also gave me powdered oyster shells and my isopods seem to absolutely love that too! I have also used cuttlebone and like that too.
I initially started off my tubs with calcium powder but I haven’t used it for a while, part of my soil base is homemade worm castings which has ground eggshells in it! 😃 I always have a lump of cuttlefish in each tub but there’s not been much sign of them eating it since I’ve been experimenting with diet. Been trailing different foods and their new favourites are dried shrimp and small fish. They haven’t been interested in much else since I started with those and I guess they’re both pretty calcium rich
Interesting. Maybe shrimp shells are preferred as it has both calcium and chitin. Shrimp shells are direct source of chitin vs creating own chitin from plant source. Chitin is the main component of their exoskeleton. In nature isopods eat dead bugs, and shrimp nutrients are close to bugs. When I first fed shrimp shells, a rubber ducky isopod ran straight to the shrimp tail with a bit of meat left, jumped on it. hugged it, and ate it up right away. It really liked it.
I have easy access to Agricultural feed (livestock) grade limestone for free from a feed mill, and plentiful eggs, so those two are my preferred choices. For the egg shells, I bake them then toss them in a bullet blender. I'm a pretty small time Isopod keeper, so that is plenty good enough for me. The advantage of the bullet blender is that the dust is sealed up.
As supplement to eat, shrimp shell provides both calcium and chitin, and my rubber ducky also likes shrimp meat. Instead of dead bugs they eat in nature, I give shrimps as supplements. In Japan, calcium-rich food for isopods include cheese and sesame seeds, though all agree cheese is too fancy for isopods. 😅
My favorite way to supplement calcium is to put dried black soldier fly larvae in the isopods supplemental food. BSF larvae have huge amounts of extremely bioavailable calcium, are available at a very reasonable price as supplemental food for poultry, and pretty much saved whole portions of the reptile hobby where animals were suffering from extreme calcium deficiency.
I have some pieces of cuttlefish bone that they chew on. There's just one terrarium. Also there's a silo type dispenser filled with high calcium mealworm food.
Calcium enriched soil and foods with supplemental calcium have been enough for most of my pods. Some large Spanish species really do like having a block of limestone to hang out on.
I keep Armadillidium maculatum, A. vulgare, and A. gestroi. Recently I gave each culture a small chunk of "dead" live rock that had been in my garden for several years. The maculatum completely ignored it. The vulgare showed slight interest. The gestroi SWARMED it. They love hanging out on it, and there are small white flecks on the substrate from them constantly chewing on it.
I finally caught one of your videos on isopods that are less than a few years old, lol. Anyways, I started with cuttlebone, swapped to crushed egg shells. I bought a mortar and pestle online but it was smaller than I thought it would be and my hands are big. It was a pain to use, sometimes literally. Now I got a small supply of chicken and cow rib bones from my own meals (free calcium, yay. lol). I'd purposely leave some meat on them, and let my Dairy Cows (or more recently my Lavas. I've tried offering to my other pods but it would always mold before they got it all) feast on them till they were meatless and bone dry (no pun intended), then pull them back out and put them in a container. I've thought of using the calcium powder you mentioned, been paranoid I'd miss something (as I often do) and buy something that contains something unsafe or just useless for my isopods. Plus the waist of money. I don't really have an income. Thanks for the video!
very interesting and informative video Rus, I never thought about this but any idea how cuttle bone is sourced, and/or it is a biproduct of some other harvesting endeavor?
I remember finding cuttlebone on the beach in Italy…I believe it washes up in considerable quantities, but I am not sure if commercial cuttlebone is collected and/or harvested as a byproduct of cuttlefish harvest.
Saw someone claim that calcium powder is "too fine and will stick to their legs." I can't find ANYTHING saying this. Any truth to it? It doesnt make any sense to me (why wouldnt substrate stick as well?).
Although I it is not my top choice, I do use it, and while I have seen a little of it stick temporarily to their legs, they eat it, and I have not noticed any ill effects.
What about watering with a calcium - magnesium liquid supplement, I have this for my whites tree frogs when I top their water up so I usually mix a 10l spray tub up & water everything including my isopods with it.
I was thinking of trying to hybridize vulgare and klugii (american magic potion & Montenegro was what I had in mind), does this seem at all plausible to you?
i just bought some calcium carbonate powder yesterday, i'm hoping that it helps with my pak chongs who seem to be crashing. i think it's because of soil acidification and me never having had enough calcium in their substrate for a cubaris from thailand
