Diet

Diet and enrichment

The main source of nutrition for your isopods will be leaf litter. Leaves from hardwood trees in various stages of decomposition can be gathered from outdoors or purchased. If you do gather it yourself, you can rinse it with water, or even allow it to sit submerged in water for a few days to remove any unwanted bugs from them, then allow them to dry.

Some keepers will bake it in the oven on a lower heat for 30 minutes to an hour, but many have started to argue that this destroys the micro nutrients that the isopods actually need, but that's up to you, isopods have shown to eat the baked leaves and thrive for many years.

Isopods love to congregate under things, like logs, bark sheets and even rocks, so place things in there for them to crawl under, just like you see when you flip a log over in the forest, all the isopods are clumped up underneath!

These little friends really don't need any extra meals other than some protein via fish food or dried blood/meal worms, although you can feed them all sorts of organics like fruits, vegetables, rotting wood, even fingernail clippings if they're clean! They'll eat just about anything. They don't require this, and can live just fine on leaf litter that you refill from time to time as you notice it gets depleted.

Feeding your isopods special treats is a great way we can interact with them, especially when colonies grow larger and any extra food is destroyed like piranhas will do in cartoons, they are voracious scavengers and will even eat freeze dried minnows or pinky mice, bones and all! There's a reason they're used in clean up crews with other creatures because they will eat any organic waste, in fact, snake skin is a popular treat for isopods! Seeing them happy with whatever extra food we throw in makes us happy, it's a common sentiment in the hobby.

Other organics will often be grazed on, like empty lotus seed pods, bits of wood, algae, lichen and flowers.

When colonies become larger you'll notice leaf litter gets eaten faster and faster, isopods will breed more if there is an abundance of food, which causes an explosive cycle, you feed them, they breed, they require more food, you feed them more food, this will continue until you have an enclosure overflowing with mancae, or baby isopods.