# Dwarf white isopod observations - Trichorhina tomentosa



## Pssh (Oct 23, 2010)

I was looking at my colony and decided I wanted to see if I could tell if the females were carrying young. As I was looking at them, I indeed could tell which ones were carrying just developing eggs and which were about to drop. I forced the ones with fully developed young to drop them and counted an average of 9 babies from each fully grown female. The young were only just a tiny bit smaller than A. vulgare new borns. 

I just thought I would share my observations. Share any observations that you've noticed if you have any!


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## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

Wow! Good eyes! Here's a neat observation. You can see through them. So if you feed them a nice big meal of freeze dried Cyclop-Eeze, They will have a orangish cast with a red stripe right down the middle! Looks pretty cool anyway.


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## Pssh (Oct 23, 2010)

That's neat! I knew they were translucent to an extent, but I did not know you could do that!


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## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

It only lasts about a day, or until it's digested, but we thought it was cool. Maybe I'll try to get a picture. S'pose we could turn em green with some Spirulina powder?


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## frogparty (Dec 27, 2007)

Yeah, feed them sweet potato or carrot and you can see the orange down the center. Pretty cool stuff. 

Heres my observations:
they don't show any interest in apple halves, but love thin apple slices
their position in their culture container will tell you if they are getting enough airflow. For me, in a sealed container, they will all rush for the surface in about 48 hours, and can die in the next day or so without ventilation of some kind(just a few holes in the lid fixes this for me) in a nicely aerated container, they prefer the lower 1/2 of the substrate


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## Eric Walker (Aug 22, 2009)

I just asked someone a few weeks ago what an average number of young per Clutch would be and they had no answer. Any idea how long it takes them to reach adult size?

How did you force them to drop them?


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## Pssh (Oct 23, 2010)

I dont really know how long it takes for them to reach adulthood. I've never really bothered to check. 

If you bother the female enough she will drop them. In this case, I just held them gently between my fingers and the females began to release them.


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## Pssh (Oct 23, 2010)

Anyone else have anything to share? I've taken an interest in these little guys over the last week or so (even though I've had them since forever.)


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## varanoid (Jan 21, 2011)

Pumilo said:


> Wow! Good eyes! Here's a neat observation. You can see through them. So if you feed them a nice big meal of freeze dried Cyclop-Eeze, They will have a orangish cast with a red stripe right down the middle! Looks pretty cool anyway.





Pumilo said:


> It only lasts about a day, or until it's digested, but we thought it was cool. Maybe I'll try to get a picture. S'pose we could turn em green with some Spirulina powder?


Does this mean that you can actually gut load isopods for feeding?


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## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

varanoid said:


> Does this mean that you can actually gut load isopods for feeding?


Seems that would be a possibility. They can obviously hold enough to change the color of their digestive system. Some may argue that it wouldn't last long enough to make a difference but it would if your frogs are hungry!


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## Pssh (Oct 23, 2010)

What he said.  They can certainly be gutloaded, but whether or not it will benefit the frogs depends on when they are consumed.


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## Pssh (Oct 23, 2010)

Hey,

Tried a small scale experiment on mite control in the cultures. One of my cultures because heavily infested with mites when I left it on a table instead of my usual eucalyptus oiled surface. I went ahead and added about a table spoon of the soil they were in into small 4 oz cups. I then added 25 isos to each cup. At the bottom of the cups I had several different organic herbs and what not to see how it would affect them. (I use eucalyptus oil to prevent mites usually.) I had a control set up as well as a salt free ms. Dash, onion powder, garlic powder, chili powder, Ginger powder, and cut and sifted dried basil leaves. 1/4 of a teaspoon was added of each. All containers had two 1/8" holes across from each other on the lid for ventilation. All containers were moist and had a high humidity. They were moved to a separate room.

After a week I can no longer see any mites in all but the control container. By day two, the ms. Dash container had no visible mites. By day 4 onion and chili powder containers had no visible mites. By day seven, the garlic powder and Ginger powder had no mites. 

While all (seemingly) worked well for mite reduction, some containers had dead isos in them. The ms. Dash had all but one of the original 25. The onion was second with 22 of the original, and the chili powder had 20. The others had significant dead isos in the container (less than 15.)

I obviously couldn't set up a very controlled experiment so there are many factors that could have and probably have affected the results. I want to continue to mess with the ms. Dash to see if it actually can ward off/kill mites.

It would be neat to see if anyone else would get similar or even completely different results. I don't like chemical methods, so I am trying to find a way to get rid of them without chemicals or tossing the whole culture. I will report back with further findings.


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## marylanddartfrog (Jun 6, 2011)

Garlic has been proven to work on mites but not by killing them but causeing the eggs layed by the mites not to hatch the mite problem will disapear after the 30 day life cycle of the adult mite ends.


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## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

Very interesting. As a bonus, your frogs get a well seasoned meal! 
I'd like to see the results in springtail cultures.


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## WendySHall (Aug 31, 2010)

marylanddartfrog said:


> Garlic has been proven to work on mites but not by killing them but causeing the eggs layed by the mites not to hatch the mite problem will disapear after the 30 day life cycle of the adult mite ends.


My understanding is that garlic powder was tried, but resulted in significant losses of the isos...so that wouldn't be a great solution. I am looking forward to hearing more about the results with the Mrs. Dash experiments and the others that didn't seem to bother the isos. 

Speaking of isos...

Doug, would you check out the pics I posted in this thread and see if you've ever seen anything like it?
http://www.dendroboard.com/forum/id...yucky-stuff-found-iso-culture.html#post665377


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## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

WendySHall said:


> My understanding is that garlic powder was tried, but resulted in significant losses of the isos...so that wouldn't be a great solution. I am looking forward to hearing more about the results with the Mrs. Dash experiments and the others that didn't seem to bother the isos.
> 
> Speaking of isos...
> 
> ...


Done. I replied over there.


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## Pssh (Oct 23, 2010)

I'm certainly going to try to repeat it multiple times to see if I get anything consistent.


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