Do I need to change the cork bark for isopods?

Although I have kept isopods for several years now, I still enjoy trying different things/tests every so often to ensure the isopods I keep are getting the best possible care.

 

Not a few weeks goes by without me asking people in one of the isopod whatsapp groups what they are currently feeding their isopods and what new things they have recently tried that have gone down well and what have’t really gone down much when placed in the tub haha.

 

What is interesting is how it is never a one size fits all, although they live on waste in the wild, it seems in captivity some can be a little more picky - for some people I know certain species devour carrot yet in my personal collections I don’t really see this.

 

Alongside providing great foods for the isopods and supplements, It is important to provide an adequate amount of hiding space for the isopods too - my go to for this is lotus pods and cork bark, not only does cork bark work as a great hiding spot, it also creates a natural moist hide where you will find most isopods hide under it which also makes it a lot easier to monitor your colony as it grows as isopods usually congregate under the cork bark.

 

Some isopods are even brave enough to sunbathe out onto of the cork bark too, my normal granulators and norma gestrois do this, funnily enough - different colour morphs of the same isopods I don’t find do the same - although this may be down to the numbers I have at the moment as I have thousands of granulated normal but only a few hundred of the pearls and oranges, alternatively the colouration could perhaps make a difference to how light sensitive they are as we find with animals of the albino morph.

 

Whilst writing this article I actually stopped to message a few people in the hobby I consider experts, my friend Janie suggested that it could be do to with light sensitivity, but also an awareness of being vulnerable to predators as they are easier to see, which is a type of subconscious awareness that is passed down genetically through certain genes. Janie also said that she did however think only true albinos would have this an issue with light sensitivity.

 

Another isopod expert called Nikki, said that she also wondered the same thing previously. Nikki actually experimented with her ablino t+ that have black eyes and her albino t- that have pink eyes and put them under the same strength light and she found the pink eyed buried themselves whilst the black eyed ones didn’t so this could possibly be the same as coloured morphs too.

 

I digress! Back to the subject at hand. Although isopods eat the cork bark, they also use this as a hiding spot - also a general place to congregate - not all isopods do this but most in my collection do.

 

The reason for this article however is that both my diary cow isopods and granulatum isopods both heavily congregated on the cork bark both under and onto for a long time. I did however notice that more recently both the types of isopods most recently started to hide in the soil, in the corners of the tubs instead. All perimeters of the tubs have remained the same, I do periodic changes in the substrate however although the way the animals acted didn’t change suddenly at the point of any change was made, it happened over a period of time.

 

Some isopod breeders never change the cork but change the enclosures and everything else from time to time, I am/have been generally one of those people, I provide wood pellets made for pizza ovens that I hydrate with boiling water then add to the substrate so the isopods have a source of wood but and also change cork bark when it starts to change in state i.e. getting too soft, has a lot of isopod poop on it or changes colour/ gets quite dark looking.

 

As none of the above had happened to the cork bark I wondered why they may of come off the cork bark, as I said before - I don’t think the perimeters of the enclosure changed at all however something had made them come off this so should it be changed or should I just wait?

 

Whenever I go to change the cork bark, I tap the cork bark softly onto a cat litter tray (new of course) and then - I then remove any isopods from this.

 

When I do this I generally used to change the tub and substrate entirely also so I place the cork bark back into the old tub and repeat the process several times using the cork bark as a way to catch the hiding pods.

 

More recently however I have been periodically changing the substrate so what I am going to do this time is after I have tapped the cork bark in the cat litter tray - leave the cork bark in the cat litter tray, every few hours I will gently tap it and also break it apart to make sure I am not missing any isopods.

 

In order to really test this what I have done is ordered new cork bark from my friend Dubia Paul and then once arrived I put it in the oven at 200 degrees celsius for 30 minutes to kill off any hitchhikers or contaminants. Before adding this to the tank I turned the existing cork over one more time and still didn’t see any diary cows on the existing cork bark.

 

To be sure I wasn’t going to lose any of the little creatures when I binned the old/existing cork I tapped it on my hand into the enclosure then left it in a cat litter tray (I use this to sift soil, never been used for my cats haha) and then binned it a few hours later.

 

Then after the new cork had cooled I placed it into the tub and left it and just a short time after, my cork bark was overran with dairy cow isopods which was awesome to see after them not utilising the cork for such a long time this made me very happy.

 

Such a small cost to make seemingly such a big difference to the isopods especially as Dubia Paul sells cork so cheap too so if you are in need of any new cork bark I highly recommend you check out his site.