General Millipede Care
Firstly, congratulations on owning millipedes! They’re a personal favourite critter of ours. Calm, harmless and ever so fun to observe meandering through their enclosures. Like isopods annd springtails they make up a heavy lifting team member of natures clean up crew, eating decaying wood that accumulates on the forest floor. Inside a terrarium they are great standalone pets or a great part of the vivarium clean up crew, eating decaying matter and doing a fantastic job of oxygenating and churning the substrate, similar to earthworms, preventing compaction and deoxygenation of the soil over time. Like all living creatures they, they have care requirements that allow them to thrive.
Temperature & Humidity
Millipedes require a high level of humidity, not because they have gills like isopods but because they lack a waxy cuticle, meaning they loose body moisture rapidly in dry air. Hence why we find them typically amongst leaf litter, tree bark and under the ground in nature. A humidity of 70% or a little higher is plenty to keep them comfortable within your tanks. Millipedes also appreciate cooler temperatures of the low 20’s but can tollerate up to 30 degrees for short periods of time. Basically, if youy are comfortable then so are they!
Substrate & Food Sources
In the wild they eat decaying organic matter in general, so leaf litter, fungi and mainly rotting wood. So with this in mind, it’s important to a large amount of leaf litter and decaying wood in your vivarium, flake soil is a great alternative to decaying wood if you cant find any around or dont want to run the risk of introducing hitch hikers into the vivarium. It’s important to make sure ou mix a lot of this food source actually into the subrate and not just on top of is as they spend a lot of time burrowing, especially babies at the beginning of their lives. As for substrate, any good mix of topsoil, compost and other additives such as charcoal, peat moss etc will do fine, it simply needs to be able to retain water without being waterclogged as well as light enough they can burrow through! It’s important to provide a calcium source like all invertabrate detrivores so they can self regulate their intake for exoskeleton growth.
Enclosure Notes
Millipedes need a substrate that is a deep as they are long, this is because they dig straight down as they are moulting to remove their old exoskeleton. If not deep enough, it can cause issues with moulting. They don’t require specific lighting however the perception of a day and night cycle is beneficial for all living creatures.
