I collected a bunch of wild P. scabers last year from the wild, both normal and calico looking ones. After a while some completely white individuals popped up, even the eyes are white. I isolated them and now have a big colony of what I found out to be P. scaber white out / snow. It is so much fun selecting and breeding your own lines, even though this morph already existed :)
Technically, since a mutation cannot appear in two separate populations in the exact same way twice, your completely white isopods are a completely new morph that you developed, just convergent to the white P. scaber morph already in the hobby. It's funny how genetics can be so different, yet produce similar results.
I love his willingness to just say 'do your research'! So many pet channels will just spoon feed you everything and don't encourage you to go out and do your own research, which you definitely should to get a well-rounded and accurate education of animal care. Getting all your information from one source is dangerous and could be misleading, so do your research!
Found a wild calico scaber outside under a plant pot in school! Super excited to try breeding her and maybe get some calico babies. (Calico's aren't common where I live, at all.) Update: Released her soon after comment was made as I couldn't find her a mate, I placed her right next to her plant pot and she stood for a second.. and then ran under the pot to her friends and family.
I picked up a small culture of Scaber Lava at an expo last year, they are easily my least shy species, they don't hide when I open the culture, and moments after dropping fish food in they are already swarming it so def protein hungry.
Just bought a culture of six lavas, so I’m looking up tips for them. Thanks so much for all your videos. They’ve helped me with so much with care for all the isopods I own
I started keeping isopods as pets recently just by collecting them from the wild, and I find it interesting that both my A. vivarum and P. scaber wild type cultures are grey with yellows stripes/spots, rather then just plain grey.
Just ordered a bundle of Lavas, Kois, and even the elusive Porcellio haasi! and a lottery mix from another seller! I can't wait to see them get going. Thank you so much for your tips and videos, they have been so great
So nice to see someone else that knows how to say scaber 😆I was starting to feel left out lol - Great video mate, these guy are without a doubt my go to species for devouring my insects that have passed on. I keep a large colony of them just for that very purpose.
now i know why I always failed to culture them #lol 😂. from your videos i'll avoid made a mistakes again so i can tried again to make a culture of blue powder isopod,, orange isopod and dwarf white isopod too..
Dunno if you'll see this since this vid is a year old. But thank you for your vids! You're my number one go to for isopod information! Hoping to get some P. Scaber - Lava next week, if it's not too hot here. They will be my first Scabers.
I caught a few P. scabers last year when i found a few orange ones in a sheepspasture. Theyre somewhere in between calico and lava as far as the morphs go. Unfortunately it seems the few adults i got died after a lil while (probably got a bit dehydrated befor i found a scheduel that worked), but i got plenty of babies atm. They got some cabbage and crushed eggshell last week and its pretty fun keeping an eye at em while they feed.
@@Aquarimax They're still a bit small but they do seem lighter. Had some normalcoloured ones in there too so might be mixed. Read somewhere that some morphs only "show up" when theyre adults or if it was gender-scewed, so i think ill have to wait a bit before i can judge the result.
I picked up 5/6 porcellio scabers from outside in august(Saw some red isopods and was interested in isolating it - didn't know what it was at first.) and now I have easily around 20+ individuals not including the mancae. I use them as snacks for my dart frogs and crested gecko now lol. I love those orange koi scabers. I may have an addiction to red and orange isopods. 😬
@@Aquarimax I have a couple individuals. They look somewhat like the calicos, so I am assuming they're female. I'm the one who asked you to identify them on FB couple days ago and about the fruit fly cultures.
In a book about soil ecology I found some stuff on isopod biology: - Isopods prefarably eat alder (Alnus) and ash (Fraxinus) leaves ower oak (Quercus) and beech (Fagus) leaves. - Isopods have a special requirements for calcium and copper. Calcium is needed for their shells and copper is part of their oxygen carrying pigment (hemocyanin). From a leaves isopods diggest 79-94% calcium and almoust all of the copper. They alsou eat their own excreta from which they use copper, which is often eliminated from a body with the end products of metabolism. (I guess fishfood gives enought copper.)
Just picked up some calicos, Dalmatians, and koi for a bioactive 10 gal based off your recommendations for humidity happy isopods. Thanks for the info @Aquarimax Pets
I was thinking, I would love to see some of your videos focusing on the bioactive setups you have for your herps with isopods (and beetles and whatnot). Very curious about how you've set things up and what it looks like at the moment, and how the isopods are doing in there. AND we would get to see your scaly critters too while you share you experience of the setup with us! That would be very exciting.
@@Aquarimax Okay! I'm glad. I'll put a copy of my comment on your related Patreon post so you have trace of it over there and you won't have to scroll through youtube to find it.
i have a small group in an ecosphere. i usually find a lot of cool morphs like calico, orange and lava in my garden and especially in my compost heap, many of which descended to some color morphs i introduced in my garden
interesting story. a while back i set up a native terrarium with some various isopods including scaber, some millipedes, some small centipedes, a tiny snail, and some earthworms. all with moss, live plants and wood. i bought some assorted porcellio scaber of ebay and put them in. a while later i was feeling a bit drained and changed it up multiple times. in the end i released the inhabitants back into my garden including both the ebay and the native scaber. weeks later i saw a lot of orange and calico scabers appearing in my garden. still see the oranges quite often until recently as i think the cold kiled them off so i will have to wait until the weather warms up too see if i can find some more idk if this classes as releasing an invasive animal as they were already native i do not encourage releasing pet isopods even if they are native but captive bred i was rather inexperienced with the hobby and i hope to properly keep some soon just thought i would share
Just too add. I scrapped the original one first ( a plant propagation tray) , then a small aquarium, then a tub. ( who knows why tf I scrapped the original as it was really good) I was not a very good isopod dad 😢😢 and sometimes forgot to feed them. This caused a population decline. The bell peppers I fed molded easily and caused a mold outbreak. The hungry isopods ate the millipedes when they molted and the centipedes were going strong. By then I was burnt out and released my critters back into their ecosystem. I also had some local vulgare too To this day I still feel bad and I am now a proud and responsible owner of many fish and arachnids and I am determined to properly research and care for these cuties:). Long story short I learnt my lesson and will always properly do my research before getting them. Rip isopods ( especially dairy louse who had some cow like markings and I personally kept). I still feel guilty to this day
This was akin to a person's first experience with say a goldfish in a bowl and they were my first invertebrate pet. Keeping my eyes out for some Dalmatian isopods to have a fresh start to my isopod keeping
I have calico isopods, but they are different colors ranging from dark brown, orange and white! All I know they are not picky and very easy to care for, and mine are breeding. I probably will get the light colored ones separated to carry on their genetics. Talk about variety!
@@Aquarimax Yes... All I know they do very well and not too picky about their conditions. They are so cute! Sometimes I see them carrying round a piece of food in their mouth walking around and I find that amusing.
I may soon buy some Porcellio scaber or collect them from the garden 🤔. I think I'll be more likely to collect a few from the garden as we have so many of these 😅 and I don't want my two roosters to eat them up☹️
Hi, thank you so much for sharing your experience! I just started in the hobby and I wonder about boxes. I've some boxes transparent and other not (just the cover is transparent). Do you think there is any issue with non-transparent boxes for some species ? I've a small amount of Porcellio Scaber, and I want to get a new, bigger box and I rather want to start right.
Great question. As long as the plastic is suitably smooth to prevent climbing, they should do just fine. I used to keep mine in a dark cupboard when I was first starting out, and they were fine.
Im very Young and I love isopod care. I have this common species I want to know what temperature and humidity levels should be maintained inside the enclosure.
I’m glad you enjoy isopods! These are adaptable in terms of temperature. If they are kept indoors, somewhere between 60-80 F, they should be fine, and occasionally a little or higher or lower is even possible. As far as humidity goes, they appreciate a gradient, so keep one side damp and the other side drier, and they will find the spot they want…no need to measure specifics if a gradient is available.
So, "Lottery Mix" will eventually revert to wild type over time and many generations? If so, isolating like kind upon arrival can secure the color variants after say 3 generations?
Well, reversion depends quite a bit on the genetic makeup of the initial population and the numbers. You will definitely get some wild types, but I have had lotto mix for years, and there is still plenty of variety. You could definitely the parents strains from it in a few generations, although hidden hets could complicate things for a while.
Possibly…they do prefer it a little damper than mealworms in general…but you might find the sweet spot. I use Porcellionides pruinosus with my Leopard Gecko, along with superworm beetles.
I got myself wild porcellio scaber, but unlike your isopds mine are very shy, very scared of light and bodyheat or breathe emitted by observers. That said my isopods hide nearly all time under the bars and other objects i provided them. other than that they seem to do good, they have eaten a lot in the first weeks but then stopped eating so much, which is when my springtails from the wild started also increasing in population. SO i am just curios, how or when will my isopods become less shy? XD
Hello! I wanted to say, that i ordered a few species around 5 or something, and a few morphs around 7 (including the lottery ticket one and powder mix) so, i wanted to know if all my enclosures have to be different? I ordered a few porcellio scaber, including snow koi, porcellioides pruinosus powder mix, venezillo parvus Dalmatian, porcellio laevis dairy cow, porcellio scaber lottery ticket, porcellio scaber orange dalmatian, armadillidium nasatum (whiteout), armadillidium Perracae, armadillidium vulgare “magic potion” japanease line, keep in mind i am a begginer, only owning a very common species i collected near my house, so what i did with every enclosure was put forest floor substrate, mixed some tiny pieces of bark and wood and charcoal, calcium, put quite a bit of spaghnum moss on the side of each, might remove some because the common isopods i have have been dying in there, but mabye i just put too much water, put fairly large pieces of wood (not dead yet) for hides but they still nibble on the top outer layer of the wood, i also put some bark so they can nibble on because i put them in their new enclosure 2 days ago, i ordered my isopods from smugbug, she says they will arrive today, supposed to come yesterday but something happened to the driver, but thats better because my leaf litter will be coming today and some extra bark that i need to add in. I watch your videos and theres a lot of wood, so I’ll put some more wood and bark, my enclosures arent that big but they are about 17-18 inches long and 12 inches wide. I would love some info from you! :)
(Forgot to add) i wanted to know, if i ordered multiple morphs of each species, can i mix 2 of them together? Or 1 extra with lottery ticket? Like for example i ordered porcellio scaber “lottery ticket” i ordered 50, since i bought containers that are too big for 25 or they will be hard to find, if i ordered like, an extra albino or whiteout morph of porcellio scaber, or any morph.. i was wondering if i can just add them in with the ones already mixed or not a good idea since the whiteouts havent been there?
And i didnt only order the extra whiteout scaber, like mabye the orange Dalmatian i can also add in the lottery mix? And normal white one (so if i can put white, white out, orange Dalmatian) added to the lottery mix, or just 1 of those since i ordered quite a lot.
Scusami, un sito che vende isopodi nella descrizione dei porcellio scaber dice che non amano ambienti umidi, tu in molti video dici che vanno bene per terrari umidi, qualcuno può aiutarmi a capire meglio quale sarebbe il loro clima ideale?
Veramente I Porcellio scaber possono adattarsi a diversi ambienti, secondo me è meglio che abbiano l’opportunità di scegliere…io cerco sempre di offrire una zona umida e una zona più arida. Devo dire pure che, per decenni, Porcellio scaber è stato fra gli isopodi più usato con le rane in terrari umidi con molto successo.
They are not toxic…though I don’t recommend eating them. If you are allergic to substrate you might have an issue, but isopods themselves are pretty safe.
@@AquarimaxUnfortunately I do not see many for sale near me & they only ones I've found so far are a thin brown color morph that look like roaches... I know, the prejudice against roaches is unjustified, but not what I want to put into my tiny 5 gallon terrarium...
@@AquarimaxThanks, I did not know they are good for a humid terrarium. I've barely ever heard of them. Do you have a video about Isopoda sp. Tarragona?
I’ve selectively bred my own orange scabers wild caught here in Santa Barbara California. Is there is any value in a separately bred Orange version from what is available currently in the hobby?
Dairy cows have been called dalmatians, as well as pandas, in some countries; but usually dairy cows refer to P. laevis while dalmatians (used not synonymously) refer to P. scaber. It's usually best to use the scientific name rather than the colour type to talk about an isopod to avoid any confusion. Some colour types are found across multiple species. I know this isn't very widespread custom in the US but it is moreso in Europe.
