Salmon Isopods (Caribodillo martinicensis)

Most of the Armadillidae sold in the hobby, the Cubaris above all, are sold as Asian animals, so a Caribbean one is worth stopping for. Salmon Isopods, Caribodillo martinicensis, come from the island of Martinique in the French West Indies, and they bring two things that are hard to find together: a wild origin that is actually on record, and a warm salmon-orange colour.

That colour is the reason most people want them. The paper that described the species calls it uniform orange to brown, often with a grey head and antennae, and that is how the animals in our photographs look: warm salmon-orange along the back, greyer at the front. One European seller says the older animals are the darker ones, and in our colony photographs the small ones are paler and greyer than the adults, so a young group should colour up as it grows. Our guide to pink isopods puts the Salmon at the orange end of the pink lines we keep.

There is a good story behind the name too. For years these circulated as Cubaris sp. 'Salmon', but in November 2025 they were formally described as a new species in a brand-new genus of their own, Caribodillo, endemic to Martinique and, for now, the only species in it. The researchers matched animals from the pet trade to wild ones from a Martinique hilltop and found them the same, and our Salmon isopod care guide tells that story in full, along with the blue glow the paper recorded under UV. If you already keep collectable species such as Rubber Ducky, Panda King or Cappuccino, this is something a little different to sit alongside them: not another Asian Cubaris, but a Caribbean isopod with its own branch of the family tree.

I keep them as a warm tropical isopod. Aim for roughly 22 to 26°C, which is warmer than a UK room sits for most of the year, so give them gentle heat all year round rather than only in winter. Give them a humidity gradient rather than a uniformly wet box: keep one end damp and let the other stay drier, so the colony can choose where to settle. A little cross-ventilation, a few small holes on opposite sides, stops the air going stale without drying everything out. The rule I follow is moist, not wet; the substrate should look damp but never drip when squeezed.

Underneath, give them a living substrate built on a base of topsoil and rotten hardwood with plenty of calcium worked through, cuttlebone or crushed shell, so their shells stay hard. I mix in flake soil for structure and food, then cover the top with a deep layer of leaf litter; magnolia leaf litter lasts especially well and gives them cover to graze under. Above all, give them surfaces to hold on to. The describing paper calls them clingers: they spend most of their time gripping bark and stone and roll up only when knocked loose, so flat bark and a few pieces of limestone matter more than a deep substrate. They are unfussy eaters that take the usual leaf litter and rotten wood, topped up with a little veg and a pinch of protein once a week; one American seller calls them protein-hungry.

They breed well. The describing paper puts their spread through European and North American collections down to easy care and a high reproductive rate, and with steady warmth a starter group should build into a colony over a few months. Because the setup stays humid and a little protein-rich, I would run a springtail culture alongside them from the start; the springtails graze the soft mould on leftovers and cause the isopods no trouble at all.

Every order is captive-bred, boxed double-walled around a ventilated tub of damp sphagnum, and posted Monday to Thursday by tracked next-day Royal Mail, with a live-arrival guarantee and a 20% overcount included as standard.