# Aged isopod cultures, any issues with substrate?



## Shinosuke (Aug 10, 2011)

I started all of my iso cultures on ABG mix which has turned, over the course of about a year, into a nasty solid sludge riddled with holes / burrows. Is that ok? Is there a time limit on how long a culture will last? 

The cultures are in plastic bins and I have giant canyon, spanish orange, and CR purple iso's. I feed a mix of veggie scraps and fish food, and I occasionally add a piece of damp cardboard but it never lasts long. I keep a bunch of broken coconut shells in there for extra surface area since the cardboard goes so fast .


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## gary1218 (Dec 31, 2005)

A year does seem like a long time. Personally I use well established cultures to start fresh new cultures every 2-3 months or so.


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## frogfreak (Mar 4, 2009)

I add a ton of leaves to mine and mix it all up. It seems to fluff it up nice.


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## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

The age of the substrate seems to matter more with springtails, than with isopods. I do have some isopods on the same substrate for over a year, but I do add leaf litter as it breaks down.
To keep production up, I would split it into 2 or 3 cultures, but don't add any more substrate. Instead add lots of leaf litter.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

compacted substrate can als indicate a lack of nutrients (since it has probably been repeatedly churned by the isopods) and is an idication that it should be refreshed (adding more food will help accomplish this). 

Ed


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## Shinosuke (Aug 10, 2011)

Thank you all for your helpful responses.

I think I'll take half of each culture out and make new ones. I don't think I'll be able to do this without squishing a few bugs, which bothers me more than it probably should, but it's past the point where this needs to be done. The cultures are getting pretty crowded so this'll probably help boost production, too.


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