Millipede enclosures?

[Roo]

Having a bit of an issue with mine in that you have to give them vegetables etc, however their conditions promote so many things to grow in there.

Is there a decent, mmm, I guess "bio-organic" milliped setup that you don't have to keep pulling things out of?

 

[Scoolman]

Put vegies in for a day or two, remove whats uneaten, replace with fresh. Leave a dish of fish flakes, no color additives, available at all times. Keep isopods with them to help combat mites.

 

[Lee Sanchez]

The ones here I don't think eat anything but leaves and rotten wood. I give the ones I keep vegies but they eat them completely. I never see the ones in the backyard leave the leaf litter area and I have a lot of garden vegies flowers and whatever near them. They are never found in the garden soil either. The two back there I don't know any names. One is very small like an inch of spaghetti and one is a few inches and grey. The grey ones are rare to find and I haven't found any this year yet. The ones I keep are a Tylobolus and where I find them is in rotten wood in grass lands that totally dry up most of the year with nothing green around. The first set I had a long time ago only had leaves and wood given to them and they got pretty fat before I put them back. The five I have now seem to be boning and if they have babies I'm going to turn my mulch pit into a millipede garden. I use the rolly pollies and sow bugs from the mulch pit in one of my roach tanks. The isopods are cool to see in the tank, eat mold and fungus and everything and you can also use them to feed spiders, frogs and whatever. I just got some cool orange ones from roach crossing and will get some dalmatian ones from bugs in cyber space before long. There are a few different ones you can buy. If you have ever opened a rotten log that has millipedes in it you will find some hard core mold and fungus so I wouldn't be surprised if they ate it too. The best way to keep mold and fungus down is air. If the substrate is moist you can let the top dry up. I have my millipedes in a tank that has two logs buried in about a foot of soil mixture with the tops sticking up about three inches or so and surrounded with oak leaves. I place any added vegies or fruit on top of the log ends. The only thing I ever have to pull out is banana peels. I think the banana peels are an aphrodisiac for them. They will be eating banana then start to bone right in front of you. Mine are very active and spend most of the time visible. You can see the tunnels go all the way to the bottom of the tank though. I have one tank that has the spaghetti sized millipedes, orange sow bugs and roaches all together in it. every now and then you will see one of the millipedes crawling on the surface or tunneling against the glass. That is too much from a noob heheh

 

[Lee Sanchez]

The millipedes did indeed bone. I have a lot of small ones now. I have no idea how many are in there but I'm gonna have to excavate my tank before they over crowd. If anyone is interested in trade for some let me know. I can get pictures. When they come to the top there is so many of them. They are growing fast but no where near the size of the big ones I started with. Seem to be easy to care for. Old hard wood buried in a mixture of organic soil, sawdust, coir, crumbled hard wood leaves and calcium sand. I keep the top covered in hard wood leaves and put fruit and vegies in it every now and then. Banana peals seemed to make them mate and this Halloween I put a bunch of pumpkin in and they went nuts for it. Seems like they like colder weather better than hot. When its hot they don't come to the surface as much. They are living with isopods from my backyard which are also over populating.