Millipede Mystery Box for Sale

Get the substrate right before anything arrives, and millipede keeping largely looks after itself from there. That is truer for a mixed box than for a single species, because whatever turns up will spend nearly all its life inside the substrate rather than on top of it, and there is no fixing a poor mix once a colony is in there.

What you are aiming for

Deep enough that the longest animal in the box could bury itself vertically. For an adult Chocolate or Olive millipede that means 20cm or more; for the smaller species 8 to 10cm is enough. Millipedes go down to moult, and a shallow box is the commonest cause of a failed moult. White-rotted hardwood is the important ingredient: crumbled soft, mixed through, making up a good third of the volume. Pesticide-free loam or coir gives it body, litter goes across the surface, and shell grit or cuttlebone turned through supplies calcium. Never use pine, cedar or any other conifer wood or needles. The resins in them are toxic to millipedes, and that applies to the leaf litter as much as the wood. Millipedes eat the substrate. It is food, not flooring.

Keep it damp all the way down and never let it compact. Compaction is what kills mixed boxes: it drives out the air, the lower layer sours, and the burrowers have nowhere to go.

What arrives

Picked the morning it ships and bagged one animal at a time, each labelled, spread across species instead of stacked on one. The bigger boxes reach into the less common end of the millipede range, and are likelier to hold something you will not find on the shelf every week. We do not publish the contents in advance. Selecting from what is strongest on the day is what lets us price a box below the sum of its listings.

Housing a mix

Give them ground to spread over, not air above. A broad shallow box serves nearly everything that turns up better than a tall one. Millipedes are peaceable and mixed groups of similar-sized species cohabit without trouble, so a single large enclosure is more workable here than it is for most invertebrates, provided the substrate is deep enough for the biggest animal in the box. One thing not to mix them with is cockroaches, which will eat millipede eggs and quietly stop a colony reproducing.

Warmth between 20 and 26C suits the majority. Heat it from the side if you heat it at all, never from underneath: millipedes burrow downwards to escape conditions they dislike, and a mat below the tub traps them between heat and a drying surface. Site the box away from any direct sun. Ventilation matters less than it does for drier species, but the surface should not stay wet.

Feeding

The substrate does most of it. Beyond it, small amounts of soft vegetables and fruit, with calcium always within reach. Clear uneaten portions inside a couple of days, ahead of any mould. Flake soil mixed through the lower layer is the single most useful addition for growth and moulting.

Add springtails. In a box this damp they are the difference between a stable enclosure and a mould problem, and they cost very little next to the animals they protect. The springtail range has the tropical species that keep producing at millipede temperatures.

Moulting and disappearing acts

A millipede that has gone missing has almost always gone down to moult, and it may stay down for weeks. Do not dig for it. Disturbing an animal mid-moult is one of the few reliable ways to kill one, and the shed skin is usually eaten before you would ever see it.

Realistic expectations

These are slow animals in every sense. Growth is measured in moults over months, and breeding rarely begins in the first year. The reward is longevity: several of the larger species will outlive most pets in the house.

The cockroach box and the isopod box run on the same principle if you want to stock a room at once.

Each animal is bagged on its own in dampened substrate and packed into a twin-wall carton. Posting happens Monday to Thursday, overnight and tracked. The usual twenty per cent overcount rides on this order as on any other, and everything is guaranteed alive on arrival. Should something be wrong, let us hear within a day of arrival and it gets fixed.