Temperate Springtails: Care Guide
Temperate springtails, Folsomia candida, are the white springtail almost every bioactive guide means when it says "add springtails". They want a small tub with a tight lid, a substrate kept damp like a wrung-out sponge, humidity around 50 to 70% and anything from 18 to 27°C, which an ordinary British room provides without a heat mat in sight. Fed a pinch of yeast now and then, a starter culture becomes a self-sustaining colony within two to three weeks. Browse the captive-bred Temperate Springtails for current UK stock.
The springtail with a day job in science
Most hobby springtails are identified loosely at best. This one is the opposite. Folsomia candida is the standard laboratory springtail, the species international soil-toxicity tests are written around, and it has been cultured in labs for decades on little more than damp substrate and granulated yeast. That pedigree is worth knowing for one practical reason: the care that follows is not folklore. The same traits that made it the laboratory standard, easy to culture, quick to breed, tolerant of a wide temperature band, are exactly what make it the default cleanup crew in the hobby.
One quirk to be aware of when you are reading labels elsewhere: the genus is often misspelled "Folsomnia". Same animal, misplaced letter n.
What "temperate" actually buys you
The name is doing real work. This species stays active and prolific from about 18 to 27°C and shrugs off the cooler end of that band, so an unheated spare room, a garage that never freezes, or a windowsill out of the sun will all hold a culture the year round. The warmth-loving tropical and coloured springtails sulk below room temperature; this one does not. For most UK keepers, and certainly for anyone running a cooler invert room, that makes it the steady default, with snowflake springtails the other cool-tolerant white worth knowing about.
Setting up a culture
A small tub or jar with a snug lid is the whole setup. These animals want the air inside kept humid, around 50 to 70%, and a heavily vented container dries faster than you can keep up with, so a few mesh-covered holes, or simply lifting the lid at feeding time, gives all the air exchange they need.
For substrate, coco coir or an organic soil mix with some sphagnum both work well. The moisture target is the one habit that matters: damp all the way through, like a wrung-out sponge, never waterlogged. Springtails breathe through the body surface, so standing water drowns a culture as surely as drying out kills it. If you use tap water for misting, the same caution applies here as elsewhere in the invert room, and the tap water guide covers when to let it stand and when to treat it.
At 1 to 3 mm long, white and eyeless, they will mostly live out of sight in the substrate. A piece of bark or a leaf on the surface gives them somewhere to gather, which makes both feeding and harvesting easier.
Feeding a mould grazer
Their role in any setup is microscopic housekeeping: grazing mould, fungal films and decaying matter at a scale isopods cannot reach. In a culture tub you recreate that with a light dusting of baker's or brewer's yeast once or twice a week, which they eat directly and which grows the soft fungal growth they graze. A sliver of mushroom or a few grains of rice do the same job.
Two honest notes belong here. The first is that overfeeding is the commonest way to sour a culture: food left uneaten breeds more mould than the animals can work through, and the wrong sort at that. The second is that springtails are choosier grazers than the marketing suggests. They favour soft, undefended fungal growth and avoid chemically defended moulds, so a springtail culture is a strong preventative and cleanup crew, not a guarantee that no mould will ever appear in an enclosure. If a stubborn patch does establish, deal with the cause, usually stagnant damp, rather than expecting the springtails to clear it alone.
Breeding that needs no thought
Populations of this species are entirely female and reproduce parthenogenetically, with a bacterial partner, Wolbachia, required for the eggs to hatch. There is no pairing, no sexing and no ratio to manage. Given moisture and food, a modest starter portion booms within two to three weeks; individual animals live for months, and at cooler temperatures noticeably longer, but it is the colony that you are keeping, not the individuals. The one way to lose it is neglect: a culture that dries out crashes quickly, so a regular glance at the moisture is the whole maintenance routine. Terms like parthenogenesis and furcula, along with the rest of the vocabulary keepers trade in, are gathered in the invertebrate keeper's glossary.
Yes, they jump
Like most springtails they carry a furcula, a spring-loaded appendage folded under the body that flings them several times their own length when disturbed, which is why opening a lively culture can feel like setting off a tiny firework. It is harmless, but if you would rather have a cleanup crew that stays put when the lid comes off, the non-jumping Santa Claus springtails are the characterful alternative, and plenty of keepers run one tub of each.
In the enclosure: isopods, frogs and feeders
They pair with everything. Isopods handle leaf litter and larger debris while springtails work the layer beneath, and the two together keep a bioactive enclosure balanced; larger isopods may snack on the odd springtail, but an established culture absorbs that easily, as the isopods-and-springtails question covers in full. In dart frog and small gecko setups they double as a self-renewing live food, a use covered properly in springtails as feeders. They do not bite, sting or bother anything they share a tub with.
Temperate, tropical or coloured?
The honest comparison, since the names confuse everyone eventually. This species is the cool-tolerant workhorse. The tropical white looks similar but wants steadier warmth and repays it with speed in heated setups. The coloured types, the Thai reds, oranges, pinks and yellows, trade some of that vigour for visibility. If you are still weighing the options, the guide to choosing a springtail walks the whole range; for a cool-running British invert room, this is the one to start with.
When they arrive
Cultures are sent as established starter portions rather than counted animals, and a new tub usually looks quiet for a day or two while they settle down into the substrate. Give it a light mist, keep it out of direct sun, and look for surface activity after a few days rather than a headcount on day one. If a culture genuinely worries you on arrival, why springtails look dead on arrival explains what you are probably seeing and what to do about it.
Common questions
How many do I need to start a colony? One starter portion seeds an average vivarium or grows into a culture tub. Numbers matter less than conditions; a small portion in a damp, fed tub becomes thousands within weeks.
Can you have too many? Not in practice. Populations track the food supply and fall back when it tightens, so a bioactive enclosure self-regulates.
How long do they live? Months rather than weeks for an individual, longer in cooler rooms, but a healthy culture continually replaces itself and effectively has no lifespan at all.
Are these the springtails I find in my garden? Britain has hundreds of native springtail species, and the ones in your compost heap are their wild cousins. The cultured animal is preferred for enclosures because it is prolific, predictable and already adapted to tub life.
The short version
- Identification: Folsomia candida, the laboratory-standard white springtail, often misspelled "Folsomnia"
- Size: 1 to 3 mm, white, eyeless
- Temperature: 18 to 27°C, happy at the cool end, no heating needed
- Humidity: around 50 to 70%, substrate damp like a wrung-out sponge, never waterlogged
- Food: mould and fungal films, topped up with a pinch of yeast once or twice a week
- Breeding: all-female, parthenogenetic, self-sustaining within two to three weeks
- Movement: jumps via the furcula, so expect fireworks when the lid lifts
- Best for: every bioactive setup, cool rooms, seeding several enclosures, and keepers who want the reliable default
Seed a pinch into a damp enclosure or grow the culture on in its own tub, keep it moist, and you will have a working cleanup crew under the litter for as long as you keep the sponge wrung out. The established starter cultures are captive-bred here in the UK.
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