The most important thing to understand about feeding millipedes is also the most counterintuitive: their main food isn't something you put in a bowl. It's the substrate they live in.
New keepers often picture feeding a millipede the way you'd feed a hamster - a daily portion of something in a dish. But a millipede is a detritivore, an animal that makes its living breaking down dead and decaying plant matter on the forest floor. It spends most of its life burrowing through and eating the material it lives in. Fruit and vegetables are supplements; the substrate is the meal.
Get that one idea right and feeding millipedes becomes simple. This guide covers the whole picture: the substrate-as-food principle, the supplementary foods millipedes enjoy, the all-important role of calcium, when to offer protein, and what to avoid.
The foundation: leaf litter and rotting wood
In the wild, a millipede's diet is overwhelmingly decaying leaves and rotting wood, and that's exactly what should make up the bulk of its diet in captivity. These two things aren't optional extras or substrate decoration - they're the staple foods millipedes evolved to eat, and without adequate access to them a millipede cannot get the nutrition it needs to grow and moult successfully.
Leaf litter. Aged, partially-decomposed deciduous leaves are more palatable and digestible than fresh ones, because microbial conditioning has already begun breaking them down. Oak is the gold standard - hardy, nutritious, slow to break down - with beech, birch and maple all good. Our leaf litter mixes British hardwood leaves, collected from Southern England woodland and naturally aged, with tougher bamboo leaves that hold their shape for longer, and our finer leaf litter substrate - chopped and milled beech and oak - works well mixed through or as a surface layer.
Rotting wood. This needs to be white-rotted hardwood: pale, soft, crumbly, with a clean earthy smell. The white-rot fungus that decays it exposes the cellulose and floods the wood with nitrogen-rich compounds, making it both digestible and nutritious. Our shredded rotten wood is a white-rotted hardwood mix, frozen to remove pests before it reaches you. For a pre-fermented option, flake soil - oak and beech broken down through a composting process - is highly digestible and makes an excellent base.
Because these are food, they get eaten, which means the substrate gradually depletes and needs topping up. A millipede enclosure that's turned to plain soil with no leaves or wood left is an underfed one. Our millipede substrate guide covers how to build and maintain a nutritious mix.
Supplementary fruit and vegetables
On top of the substrate, most millipedes enjoy a range of fresh produce - though how enthusiastically depends on the species. These are supplements that add variety and moisture, not the core of the diet.
Commonly enjoyed foods include cucumber (a near-universal favourite), courgette, carrot, squash, banana, melon, apple, pear, oranges and cooked sweetcorn. Different species have their own preferences - keepers report carrot going down particularly well with Thai Rainbows, while the big unfussy giants like the Ghana Speckled Leg will eat almost anything you offer.
A few sensible rules:
- Go easy on sugary fruit. High-sugar fruits like banana and melon are fine in moderation but can cause issues in excess and attract mould and pests, so offer them sparingly.
- Remove uneaten food within a day or two. Fresh produce moulds quickly in a warm, humid enclosure. A small ceramic dish as a designated feeding spot makes it easy to offer food and clear away what's left.
- Wash produce to avoid pesticide residues.
One important exception: dietary specialists
Not every millipede takes fruit and veg. The Amber Millipede (Pelmatojulus ligulatus) is a notable specialist - it largely ignores fresh produce and lives almost entirely on white-rotted wood and leaf litter. For species like this, the substrate isn't just the main food, it's very nearly the only food, so keeping a steady supply of well-decayed hardwood and leaves is essential. It's worth checking the specific needs of your species rather than assuming everything eats the same way.
Calcium: not optional
If there's one supplement that isn't negotiable, it's calcium. A millipede's exoskeleton is calcified, and it adds new segments with every moult throughout its life, so the demand is constant and lifelong. Calcium deficiency is one of the most common causes of weak, pitted or deformed exoskeletons and failed moults, and it quietly suppresses breeding too, since egg-producing females have especially high requirements.
Calcium should be available at all times, not offered occasionally. Two good sources:
- Cuttlebone - soft enough for millipedes to scrape and consume easily, ideal left on the surface for grazing. You'll see worn indentations appear where they've been working at it.
- Crushed oyster shell - small pieces mixed through the substrate, so burrowing millipedes come across it as they move. Calcium matters in the wild too: the British Myriapod and Isopod Group notes that the pill millipede Glomeris marginata is most typical of woodland on lime-rich soils, and that in Flanders soil calcium was the strongest factor in how many there were.
You can also crush eggshell or use ground limestone, but cuttlebone and oyster shell are the simplest options.
Protein: occasional but valuable
Millipedes need some protein, particularly growing juveniles and breeding females, who eat noticeably more when producing eggs. Protein is offered periodically - once or twice a week is plenty - rather than constantly.
Good options include tropical fish flakes, seven flake types with fish meal as the first ingredient and 47 per cent crude protein, crumbled dry onto the substrate a pinch at a time. Dried shrimp are whole and sun-dried, shells and all, at up to 62 per cent crude protein; drop in a few whole, or break them up for smaller species. Spirulina algae wafers, 15mm discs at 34 per cent crude protein, go in dry on a piece of bark and soften slowly in a damp tub, so millipedes can graze on one for a couple of days. Bee pollen, flower pollen that honeybees pack into small granules, is a hobby favourite; depending on the flowers, it runs between ten and forty per cent protein by dry weight, and a pinch on a dish or bare substrate is plenty. As with fresh food, don't leave protein sitting long enough to mould - clear away what isn't eaten.
Moss, lichen and the extras
Many millipedes graze on moss and lichen, and these make a nice naturalistic addition that several species appreciate. Cork bark and the leaf litter itself also get nibbled over time as supplementary food. None of these are essential, but they add variety and help recreate the forest-floor diet a millipede is built for.
What to avoid
- Softwood and conifers. Never feed or use pine, spruce or other conifer wood, needles or bark: conifer material is poorer food that millipedes eat less, and its resins may harm them. Hardwood only.
- Anything with pesticides or fertilisers. Whether it's wood, leaves, soil or produce, chemical residues are a real risk. Source carefully.
- Letting the substrate run dry. This isn't a food in itself, but it affects their food: the fungi and bacteria that break down leaves and wood slow sharply when the litter dries out, so the food in the tub decays far more slowly. Keep it appropriately moist so the wood and leaves keep breaking down.
- Over-relying on sugary fruit or leaving food to rot. Both invite mould and pest outbreaks in a warm, humid enclosure.
The simple version
Feeding millipedes comes down to one principle and a few additions. Build the diet on a deep, nutritious substrate of leaf litter and white-rotted hardwood, kept topped up and appropriately moist - that's the meal. Offer fruit and veg as supplements, keep calcium available at all times, provide protein once or twice a week, and avoid softwood, chemicals and anything left to go mouldy. Do that and your millipede has everything it needs to grow, moult and thrive.
Everything mentioned here is in our accessories range - substrate components, calcium, protein and supplements - and the listing for every species in our millipedes for sale collection covers what it eats. If you're putting together a feeding routine and want a hand, I am always happy to help, so do get in touch.
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