# Feeder pics



## rozdaboff (Feb 27, 2005)

Blue (European) springs









Dwarf Striped Woodlice









Small Tropical White springs









Mixed springtail population - if you look closely - you can identify two types - as well as a mite









Firebrat









Dwarf White Woodlice


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## sbreland (May 4, 2006)

Nice pics Oz! Wish I could get that kind of detail out of my camera, but then again I am sure you spent a good bit more than I did on my camera!
Are the blues and small tropical whites mine or from another source? First time I've seen a good up close pic of em. One thing I have noticed is that my blues now have quite a few random pink springtails in there... and they've never been housed anywhere close to each other! Don't know if there were some eggs from the pinks in there with the blues, but there is no way they could have gotten in there otherwise.


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## xm41907 (Nov 26, 2007)

nice pics! what are you culturing your woodlice on?


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## Corpus Callosum (Apr 7, 2007)

Yeah, where did you get the blues from? I thought I knew where mine were from but now I'm confused..


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## rozdaboff (Feb 27, 2005)

I wish I could get more detail out of mine. I am trying to come up with a couple of things to try and increase the magnification of the pics - but I also want to increase the resolution of my sensor (which means a new body).

Both the blues and the small tropicals came from you (Stace). Here are some cropped, zoomed images of them (not the greatest):

Blues (with a mite :lol: )









Small Tropical









I lost my pinks. I am going to try them again at some point with mushrooms to see how they do.


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## rozdaboff (Feb 27, 2005)

A couple of pics I forgot that I took:

Silver springtail (from Mike)









Mite - not sure what type, compost of some sort









Now - mites are a pain - but I have yet to have them take over a culture. I also find them to be great froglet food. This type doesn't seem to be predatory - so I am happy living with them.


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## sbreland (May 4, 2006)

The really cool thing is that mites don't really bother the blues for some reason. My cultures got mites real bad at one time and then the mites actually died off but the springtail #s never really took a hit. I lost my pinks as well to mites though, but these new ones that are mixed in with my blues are really interesting. They are much bigger than I remember the pinks being (they are about 3-4 times the size of regular springs), but they are sporadic at best so far. I just started splitting my cutures in hopes of getting #s up and hopefully the pink ones will do good as well. I am thinking about trying to set up a culture of them by themselves, but that would pretty much mean I would have to go through the blue springtail cultures and pick them out individually... yeah, picking out individual springtails doesn't sound like my idea of fun either! :roll:


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## sbreland (May 4, 2006)

I really need to get some of those silvers when it warms up a bit. Had some shipped to me, but I don't think they made it through shipping...


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## KeroKero (Jun 13, 2004)

Sounds like you need a pooter! Just point and suck 

My springtails took a serious hit due to all my traveling... all the cultures dried out almost completely... it was funny to find one of the white varieties thriving :shock: I think that species likes it drier anyways :lol: 

Oz... can I use your pics for the feeder guide I'm working on? They are awesome, not to mention I'm sure you've got plenty of info that would be great to put on there if you let me


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## rozdaboff (Feb 27, 2005)

Sure Corey - you don't need to ask - just use what you like.

Also - I can bring down a variety of springs to the MADS meeting to get you started again. But - as I mentioned above - it is possible that some of them have mites. Just let me know.


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## KeroKero (Jun 13, 2004)

Oz, everything I have has mites. My mites have mites. I've gotten over it  The stuff in with my springtails seem to be compost mites anyways, and I think those are just all the better  New starters would be appreciated... let me know what I can do in return? And no, I'm not sending my 2nd male with you too 

Guess this means I need to work on those feeder profiles more... Hmmm... need to dig up that blurb you did about the firebrat set up, it rocked!


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## Otis (Apr 16, 2006)

i think i have those same type of mites, at least they look a lot like that. at first i flipped out, i have two cultures with them and left the mites in one. i still have both cultures and they both produce the same. have you noticed that they are on the top of the lid? they seem to be smaller than the ones in the soil.


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## syble (Mar 20, 2007)

great pics! Any way to do some size comparison? like pictures with some common item for scale? Which of the springs are the largest?
Thanks
Sib


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## Julio (Oct 8, 2007)

anyone culturing black spring tails?


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## Roadrunner (Mar 6, 2004)

The Blacks only seem to culture well for me in the tanks for some reason.


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## Dancing frogs (Feb 20, 2004)

frogfarm said:


> The Blacks only seem to culture well for me in the tanks for some reason.


Hmmm...maybee they like the poo...


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## KeroKero (Jun 13, 2004)

Depends on what you mean by black springtails... I have some black springtials... about half the size of my standard tropical whites :lol: If you're referring to the large european black springtails that get huge... not seen them in the US... 6 mo generation time :? Not to be springtail racist but most of the black species I've heard come across have proven to be highly seasonal so their reproduction is spotty.


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## markbudde (Jan 4, 2008)

To dig up an older thread...

I've recently been playing around with culturing springs and woodlice in petri dishes on plaster. My tropical whites seem to be doing well and the woodlice are doing so so. I've also been playing with some _Orchesella villosa_ (I'm guessing) that I caught in a local park, which are breeding tremendously. I caught them on a day when it was snowing, so their breeding may eventually slow down, but so far they have continued to produce a ridiculous number of offspring. Unfortunately, they are to big for my thumbnails, but I think that they would make a really good food for some larger species. I'll post an update in a month and let you know if they are still producing.

I took these pics with a microscope.
Tropical Whites (I think)









O villosa in a petri dish. You can see some eggs towards the bottom of the dish.









O villosa closeup









O villosa eggs. These are freshly laid and will take 6 days to hatch. 









A size comparison. I wish that I had put a fly on there as well for reference.


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## markbudde (Jan 4, 2008)

I'm just posting this here for the record. I have concluded an experiment on the generation time of the tropical whites pictured above, which I believe belong to the genus _Lepidocyrtus_. It took 2 weeks and 5 days for the springs to go from egg to egg at 28C. The food preference seems to be for leaves (carrot leaves or basil leaves) and not mushrooms, yeast, carrot roots of potatoes. Cheers.


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## 41714049 (Feb 23, 2006)

Here is another feeder pic... bean weevil larva... was testing to see if the beans that were shipped to me arrived with larvae still alive.


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## markbudde (Jan 4, 2008)

Do those bean beetle larvae cause the beans to jump like mexican jumping beans? I'm not sure if they're the same species.


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## KeroKero (Jun 13, 2004)

Nope, not even vaguely related. The beetle larvae (not true weevils) don't really do much of anything except sit there an eat... they evidently work a bit to get to beans if they weren't laid on an appripriate bean, but the only larvae I've seen outside a bean don't do much. The beans have never moved for me... the ones I've broken open don't really have enough room to do any movement!

It's actually a type of moth larvae (_Cydia_ sp.) that makes the "Mexican Jumping Beans" move, not a beetle.


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