It has obviously been a while since last post. Camera issues have been by far the primary cause of this posting drought, but for the most part, they have now subsided. 🙂 For that reason, I can now bring you your daily dose of arthropods. 😛 Let's begin.
For months I had been seeing posts around Facebook about a new and upcoming business, Roly Poly Ranch, owned by a guy by the name of Mark Eastburn. After the official website was opened and I was able to get a good look at their inventory, I decided to reach out to Mark. There were a couple species I was interested in and succeeding a bit of negotiation, we agreed to a trade. 😊 He was not able to ship out the isopods right away, but instead of waiting until the next week, he very awesomely went with express mail. For some reason unknown to me, they still ended up taking two days to arrive, but even in rather sizzling temps, only one individual parished out the nearly 3 dozen isopods sent! All told, I had 12 Cubaris murina and approximately 20 Porcellio laevis "Dairy Cow" to start my own colonies with. 🙂 With that out of the way, let's chat about my crustaceous acquisitions!
Porcellio laevis is a species I love and have kept over much of my time in the isopod hobby. I had them from pretty much the time I started formally keeping isopods and (if I remember correctly) only lost them completely during last year's moving madness. This time I went with a nice, established morph instead of the multicolored CA line that I had exclusively kept before. "Dairy Cow" in the U.S hobby today comes from Europe and is similar to the dalmation morph of Porcellio scaber, but it seems to routinely throw large spots instead of the teeny, tiny ones commonly displayed by scaber (though the size of the spots on scaber may be temp dependent). It is thought that there are many subspecies of P.laevis and the dairy cows certainly support the case as they will reportedly not reproduce with P.laevis "Orange". Most of the individuals I received are still quite small and below reproduction age, but a couple are around half grown so hopefully they can start getting this colony going soon. 🙂 I'm currently keeping my group in a 6 qt. container with only the gap in between the lid and rim of the container for ventilation although I'll likely add a bit of additional ventilation soon. The substrate is around an inch of a moist compost soil, topsoil, cypress mulch, and perlite mix. Besides that, there are a couple pieces of bark for hiding, a pile of leaves for consumption, and a moist clump of sphagnum moss in one of the corners for moisture regulation.
Pics, Pics, Pics.
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| Medium-sized P.laevis "Dairy Cow" |
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| Small and medium-sized P.laevis "Dairy Cow" |
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| P.laevis "Dairy Cow" enclosure |
Cubaris murina, also spoken of as the Little Sea Isopod, is a pantropical species, which I've had my eye on for quite a while but just recently chose to pull the trigger on. These isopods along with some other Cubaris (and possibly a few others) have a rather unique finish to their exoskeletons that can be said as looking almost powdery. Coloration seems to vary considerably within populations with some individuals having a bluish coloration and some appearing a dull gray and some just having orange uropods to a few having orange all around the backside and even a bit up around the head! It is not inconceivable at all that a morph could be created that resembles the unidentified Red-Skirted Isopod pretty much completely. Unfortunately, these are slow breeders producing very few babies per litter, buuut luckily mine have had at least a litter already shortening the painful wait I'll have to endure for an established colony. 😅 I'm currently keeping my group in a 64 oz. container with a good amount of pinholes poked around the rim. The substrate is around an inch of a moderately moist compost soil, topsoil, cypress mulch, and perlite mix, although I will try to keep things only slightly moist. There is a piece of eggcrate for hiding under, a pile of dead leaves for consumption, and a clump of moist sphagnum moss in one of the corners for moisture regulation.
Pics you want? Pics you'll get.
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| Larger C.murina individuals |
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| Young C.murina next to piece of perlite |
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| C.murina enclosure |
I really love how the isopod collection is coming along and I hope you guys love reading about it. 🙂 That'll be it for today's post and until next time, goodbye!
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