# Starting cultures for dwarf whites



## Crazy frog (Aug 8, 2010)

Hi , I am new to culturing isopods and had read up about them being very useful in terrariums as clean up crew and snacks for my frogs. So I got myself 150 pcs of dwarfs whites and I am using a plastic container size 9 by 6 by 2 inch to house them,using abg mix and some cardboards on top of the soil mix. My question is how many dwarfs whites should I use to start an new cultures 50pcs each container or 150 into one container? And how fast do the whites reproduces so that I can start new cultures again? What the best and mite safe food to feed ?


----------



## frog54 (Aug 15, 2010)

I am kinda new to them myself. I would probably split in half. But you can probably do thirds. What are you feeding them. I have a simular mix but I add paper shred to mine. And then I feed melon , like the skin and a little more. Vegie scraps and sometimes mushroom.


----------



## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

http://www.dendroboard.com/forum/food-feeding/66991-how-culture-isopods-woodlice-springtails.html

Personally, I'd pull about 25 to start a back up culture and keep the rest together as the main culture.
Mites tend to happen in isopod cultures. Springtails I feed 100% active bakers yeast and that helps with mites but isopods seem to do better on other foods. I find that they don't take over and kill it off they way that mites kill off springtails. Eventually, your isopod colony can starve out the mites when it really gets rolling. If it seems to you like there are too many mites you can throw in a piece of mango skin. The mites love it and you can pull it out in a day or so to drastically reduce the mite population.
Dwarf whites seem to take a couple of months to mature sexually and start the next generation. That's way longer than it takes to get a good springtail culture started but once it really gets rolling they produce nicely.


----------



## Crazy frog (Aug 8, 2010)

I am currently feeding them some high quality fish food with protein of 50% and vitamins. Alright will pull out 25pcs of them as a back up but how big container should I house them in? As I read up that they don't move much is a FF deli container is big enough to keep 25 pcs ?


----------



## JimO (May 14, 2010)

Pumilo is the expert, but all my dwarf white cultures are approximately that size or smaller.


Crazy frog said:


> I am currently feeding them some high quality fish food with protein of 50% and vitamins. Alright will pull out 25pcs of them as a back up but how big container should I house them in? As I read up that they don't move much is a FF deli container is big enough to keep 25 pcs ?


----------



## Crazy frog (Aug 8, 2010)

JimO said:


> Pumilo is the expert, but all my dwarf white cultures are approximately that size or smaller.


Smaller? Then how many whites would you have in the culture before it over crowding before you start pulling them out ?


----------



## Shinosuke (Aug 10, 2011)

They get over-crowded?



I have mine in plastic containers a bit smaller than shoe boxes and probably have hundreds in each. I wouldn't be shocked if my dwarf purple had thousands in it.


----------



## JimO (May 14, 2010)

I really don't know what a healthy density is, but with regular feeding I'll have many hundreds in a 16-ounce container (including juveniles). I've seeded all my vivs, but keep the mother cultures going in case I need more. When I get a lot and the substrate starts getting broken down, I split the culture, or I make up starter cultures and sell or trade them, and add fresh substrate and cardboard.

This might not be the most efficient way to grow them, but I haven't had any problems so far.


Crazy frog said:


> Smaller? Then how many whites would you have in the culture before it over crowding before you start pulling them out ?


----------



## Crazy frog (Aug 8, 2010)

JimO said:


> I really don't know what a healthy density is, but with regular feeding I'll have many hundreds in a 16-ounce container (including juveniles). I've seeded all my vivs, but keep the mother cultures going in case I need more. When I get a lot and the substrate starts getting broken down, I split the culture, or I make up starter cultures and sell or trade them, and add fresh substrate and cardboard.
> 
> This might not be the most efficient way to grow them, but I haven't had any problems so far.


Ok , thanks jimo  will take note and by the way is there a guide on how many dwarfs whites to seed per gallon for your vivs? As I am currently using 15-20 gallons tank and I got like 30 tanks to seed with isopods and springtails. But the problem is I only purchase only 150pcs of whites as I won't want to import more as I am paying about 1usd per pc as I got to ask a company in my country to import them in for me which the paper work is kind of troublesome and it kind of expensive .


----------



## JimO (May 14, 2010)

This is what I would do. As Doug indicated, I'd make a backup culture with about 25 individuals, then I'd split the rest into two large mother cultures. After feeding them for a few weeks, start checking for hatchlings (the size of springtails and smaller). It might take a couple of months to see a significant number of hatchings. At this point, you should have hundreds of eggs, hatchlings and juveniles and to seed your vivs. Doing it this way, instead of placing a few individuals into each viv, will allow for a higher density of all ages of isos in the initial seeding. It would be even better to split the cultures again and feed them until they are booming before seeding the vivs.



Crazy frog said:


> Ok , thanks jimo  will take note and by the way is there a guide on how many dwarfs whites to seed per gallon for your vivs? As I am currently using 15-20 gallons tank and I got like 30 tanks to seed with isopods and springtails. But the problem is I only purchase only 150pcs of whites as I won't want to import more as I am paying about 1usd per pc as I got to ask a company in my country to import them in for me which the paper work is kind of troublesome and it kind of expensive .


----------



## Shinosuke (Aug 10, 2011)

Wow, that's rough. If you kept 30 for breeding that would only leave 4 per tank, they might never find each other to breed in a tank that big before they got slurped up.

My suggestion would be to split them into 2-3 cultures and let them breed for a month or two to get your population booming before you seed the tanks.


----------



## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

JimO said:


> This is what I would do. As Doug indicated, I'd make a backup culture with about 25 individuals, then I'd split the rest into two large mother cultures. After feeding them for a few weeks, start checking for hatchlings (the size of springtails and smaller). It might take a couple of months to see a significant number of hatchings. At this point, you should have hundreds of eggs, hatchlings and juveniles and to seed your vivs. Doing it this way, instead of placing a few individuals into each viv, will allow for a higher density of all ages of isos in the initial seeding. It would be even better to split the cultures again and feed them until they are booming before seeding the vivs.





Shinosuke said:


> Wow, that's rough. If you kept 30 for breeding that would only leave 4 per tank, they might never find each other to breed in a tank that big before they got slurped up.
> 
> My suggestion would be to split them into 2-3 cultures and let them breed for a month or two to get your population booming before you seed the tanks.


More than a month, really. You'll want to work them in cultures for 2 or 3 months before trying to seed that many vivs out of them. I would do more like Jim has suggested. Personally I'd go with one smaller backup culture with 25 or so, and one bigger culture with the remainder. Make sure you have some ventilation. I use the .3 micron filters as mentioned in my earlier link, to make sure I never have another isopod suffocation. I killed off the first white isopod culture I ever had. It had just started to really get rolling, which is when we tend to crash them because a bigger, growing culture has more oxygen demand. Please, especially as it will be difficult for you to replace them, make sure you don't suffocate them or dry them out. Those are the two biggest causes of failure.
You can start a culture with as few as 3 adult bugs as demonstrated by Mark Budde in his isopod thread http://www.dendroboard.com/forum/food-feeding/46452-how-i-culture-woodlice-isopods.html I tell you this to suggest that if you have any frog friends, set them up with a small culture of 5 or 6 bugs. If you crash yours, you will be glad for his back up.


----------



## JimO (May 14, 2010)

Doug brings up a good point (as usual). Since it costs so much for you to import cultures, you not only want a backup culture of your own, but another backup at another location in case something happens at your home, like if you did some painting or spraying for pests, etc. that could kill all your cultures. I'd also keep the backup culture in a different room in case there is some localized problem (mites, dramatic temp change, etc).

I would also recommend keeping a mother culture (and a backup) after you have seeded your vivs. If it costs that much to import them, you can share, trade, or sell them to other hobbyists. You could easily make back your investment in 6 months by selling starter cultures for significantly less than you paid to import them. In my opinion, there is no rush to get the vivs seeded. They're great to have, but not essential, so you can afford to wait 3 to 6 months before seeding your vivs.

Good luck.


Pumilo said:


> More than a month, really. You'll want to work them in cultures for 2 or 3 months before trying to seed that many vivs out of them. I would do more like Jim has suggested. Personally I'd go with one smaller backup culture with 25 or so, and one bigger culture with the remainder. Make sure you have some ventilation. I use the .3 micron filters as mentioned in my earlier link, to make sure I never have another isopod suffocation. I killed off the first white isopod culture I ever had. It had just started to really get rolling, which is when we tend to crash them because a bigger, growing culture has more oxygen demand. Please, especially as it will be difficult for you to replace them, make sure you don't suffocate them or dry them out. Those are the two biggest causes of failure.
> You can start a culture with as few as 3 adult bugs as demonstrated by Mark Budde in his isopod thread http://www.dendroboard.com/forum/food-feeding/46452-how-i-culture-woodlice-isopods.html I tell you this to suggest that if you have any frog friends, set them up with a small culture of 5 or 6 bugs. If you crash yours, you will be glad for his back up.


----------



## Shinosuke (Aug 10, 2011)

Pumilo and jimo have been doing this much longer than I have. I'm saying they have more experience, not just making fun of them for being old =P They also do things on a much larger scale than a little hobbyist like myself.


----------



## JimO (May 14, 2010)

Doug has much more experience culturing bugs and he claims I am older than him, but I bet he looks older .



Shinosuke said:


> Pumilo and jimo have been doing this much longer than I have. I'm saying they have more experience, not just making fun of them for being old =P They also do things on a much larger scale than a little hobbyist like myself.


----------



## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

JimO said:


> Doug has much more experience culturing bugs and he claims I am older than him, but I bet he looks older .


Hmm, you know that could be attributed to your failing vision.


----------



## Crazy frog (Aug 8, 2010)

Thanks guys for the fast reply , Currently I had kept all 150pcs in a 9 x 6 x 2 with 40 small holes make from a needle would that be enough as breathing holes? The country I stay has a humidity range from 50-90 and temperature 25-34...I was actually thinking of making more holes as since the place I stay in the humdity is kind of high, I won't think that my cultures will dry out that easily right ?


----------



## pdfCrazy (Feb 28, 2012)

Yeah, I've met Doug a few times as he lives nearby. I can attest he is young and spry (appearing) when he scoots around with his walker as quick as he does. 

Seriously though, it may be tempting to start seeding out your dwarf whites fairly early on. Patience is a virtue. When the adults reach maturity, they become fairly prolific if conditions are decent. On top of my substrate, I put in 4 x 4 inch slices of carboard. within a month or so, the cardboard is startign to deteriorate a little...but more importantly, the whites are layered throughout it, munching away. They literally turn the cardboard to swiss cheese/sawdust as they eat through it. I would say it took 3 months before I really started seeign good numbers of offspring. It may sound self evident, but the more adults you have, the more offspring you have. But theres more to it than that..I find theres a cumulative effect. 100 adult buggs appear to produce well more than double what a culture with just 50 do. I suspect theres a a ceiling to that though once you reach a heavy density of them. But Pumilio and Jim are right...absolutly keep a "safety net" backup culture. It dosnt have to be large. As that backup culture itself starts to grow, take out 20-30 individuals and start a new back-up and use the rest for a new culture.


----------



## JimO (May 14, 2010)

Eh!? What'd ya say sonny?


Pumilo said:


> Hmm, you know that could be attributed to your failing vision.


----------



## Crazy frog (Aug 8, 2010)

It's been 3month+ of happy culturing and I already had 6 cultures that contains about 1000+ of dwarf whites now and my question is how many adults it needed to seed a 15gallon tank? Each 15gallons has a Floor space of 60cm length x 30cm width and 3-4inch thick of ABG mix ?? 
My plan is to use them are clean up crew ( dont know they will feed on frogs poops???) and if they are unlucky out in the open the frogs will have them as snacks .


----------



## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

There is no rule on how many to seed a viv with, other than perhaps as many as you can afford to.
I've had successful seedings with as few as 25 isopods thrown into a 25 gallon viv, and I've also seeded tanks with a thousand isopods.


----------

