# White woodlice and cardboard



## Dancing frogs (Feb 20, 2004)

What's the deal with white woodlice and cardboard?
I've got a large number of organic goodies in my 12 qt culture to chew on and live in, but they seem to like the cardboard way better than anything.

They appear to both eat the cardboard and live in the corrugations, much like you would expect a termite to.

I would really like to find something that suits their needs as well as the cardboard does, but comes from a more natural source, for obvious reasons.

The 12 qt. culture has charvoal, lots of oak leaves, coir fiber mat (which the larger roly polies really like) spagnum moss, and maybee a little coco fiber.
The only thing that comes to mind would be rotten wood with the bark still on.
On the bright side, at least I have something that is working!

Any ideas?


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## Roadrunner (Mar 6, 2004)

if they are anything like the platyarthrus hoffmanseggi they share there habitat w/ termites. there are a couple white woodlice which do. mine havent really gone for anything ive thrown in but seem to be starting to reproduce in coco fiber and coco chips and cardboard. i`m not seeing near the production i do w/ the pygmy red woodlice or the dwarf striped woodlice. i`m not sure the mid 70`s is an adequate temperature for the dwarf whites though.


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## Dancing frogs (Feb 20, 2004)

frogfarm said:


> if they are anything like the platyarthrus hoffmanseggi they share there habitat w/ termites. there are a couple white woodlice which do. .


This would make sense, they really like the tunnels in the cardboard.

Alternatively, if I can't come up with a natural "food grade" substrate, maybee I'll just start using clean pizza cardboards...one would hope they would be "cleaner" than just ordinary cardboard boxes.

Mine seem to be reproducing fine around 78, they took a while to get going, but that is mostly cause I started with only around 10 or 15 of them. :wink: :lol: :evil:


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## bluedart (Sep 5, 2005)

Dude, the cardboard is just that: wood. Processed, but still wood. In my experiences with isopods, they multiply best when given LOTS of top cover (ie cardboard, bark, etc). If you're worried about spreading something to your frogs, have a side culture with nothing but organics and place them in that container for a couple of weeks, but I wouldn't worry.


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## Dancing frogs (Feb 20, 2004)

Well, I think most of the cardboard is recycled fiber materials...
I've seen some nasty crap get thrown in the cardboard crusher where I work.
It's mainly chemicals that I worry about with the cardboard...and I'm pretty sure heavy metals will stay in an organisms system for a long time.

Maybee I'm overly paranoid, but I just don't want my frogs eating garbage!


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## 955i (Mar 23, 2006)

I keep my _Trichorhina tomentosa_ in plastic containers half filled with orchid bark chips. I feed them fish food and they are multiplying at a tremendous rate.


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## Dancing frogs (Feb 20, 2004)

Ok, I'll give that a shot...
Thanks!


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