Porcellio nicklesi 'Orange Blaze' Isopods

There is a wrong assumption buried in this animal's origin story, and it is worth correcting before anything else. Porcellio nicklesi comes out of cave systems in Spain, and the word cave pulls most keepers towards a sealed box, moss across the whole floor and a misting bottle. Do that and the damp will kill them. This is a cave animal that wants a dry box. It does not tolerate high humidity, and the biggest favour you can do it is to leave most of the enclosure dry.

Adrien Dollfus described the species in 1892, originally as a subspecies of Porcellio bolivari and later raised to full species, which is why it still sits close to our P. bolivari 'Lemonade' and the 'Yellow Ghost' form of the same relative. 'Orange Blaze' is the orange line: warm orange colouring broken up with black and white speckling, against a wild type of plain, unremarkable grey. Where the morph came from is not settled. Sources variously call it natural variation, a cross, or a selected line, so I would rather describe the animal and leave the question open. I keep the 'Tang' line and the plain form of the same species as well, and the only difference I will state with any confidence is orange morph against grey wild type.

Adults reach about 20mm in the body, closer to 30mm measured to the tips of the uropods, so this is a long, leggy Porcellio and not a compact one. Sexing is easy once they are grown, because males carry noticeably longer uropods than females and you can call it across the tub without lifting anyone out. No Porcellio conglobates and this one is no exception. Startle it and it scurries, quickly, then clamps itself flat under a slab of bark and sits tight. Give it enough flat cover and you will see that behaviour every time you open the lid.

Humidity is the whole page

Hold humidity between 45 and 55 per cent. That figure is the point of the species, and every other decision protects it. Keep roughly a fifth of the floor moist, a patch of moss with rotting white wood worked through it, and leave the remaining four fifths dry. Ventilation wants to be medium to high, since a cool room will not trouble them at all while a close wet one finishes a colony off. Temperature is the easy part at 18 to 28°C, which covers a normal UK room for most of the year with no heating at all. If after a fortnight the box looks too dry to you, ignore that instinct.

Substrate only needs to be 3 to 5cm deep. These are not deep burrowers, and a tall column of soil holds moisture you do not want. Lay hardwood leaf litter over it generously and stack in plenty of bark, slate and flat cover, since clamping space is what the animals actually use. Calcium demand is high, so keep cuttlebone available at all times and crush a little into the substrate as well. Offer protein regularly, fish flake, dried shrimp or bloodworm, and put it down on the dry side where it will not spoil.

Who it suits

I would call this challenging to medium, and not a first isopod. It breeds seasonally instead of continuously, so expect quiet stretches followed by a burst, and do not read a pause as a fault in your setup. Once a colony has settled it is prolific, with medium to large litters and maturity at around six months. Anyone who has run a dry Porcellio before will find the routine familiar. If this would be your first, our guide to the different Porcellio species and the wider Porcellio range are the sensible place to start.

Thursday is the last day I will post and Monday the first, so nothing of ours sits in a depot over a weekend. Packing is damp sphagnum in a vented deli tub, that tub inside a double-walled outer box. Everything moves tracked, next day, Royal Mail, in your hands before 1pm. I add 20% over the count out of habit, so nobody opens a tub short, and every order carries our live arrival guarantee.