Camouflage Isopods (Troglodillo sp.)

The name on most labels for this animal is wrong. It moves around the UK as Troglodillo rotundatus, and more than one isopod is being sold under that single binomial. Troglodillo rotundatus Kwon and Taiti, 1993 is a real described species, and its spotting is green. This one is lemon-lime with yellow markings, which is not the same animal, and the better-informed sellers list it as an undescribed Troglodillo sp. 'Camouflage'. We use that name because it is the honest one, at least until somebody sits down and describes the animal formally.

What you actually see is a small isopod in lemon-lime, with yellow markings running across the back and a body that is translucent, not merely pale. The translucency is the unusual part. Most isopods carry solid pigment in the shell, and this one lets light through it, which is what gives a healthy adult that lit-from-within look under a terrarium lamp. Adults reach up to about 12mm, so this is a small animal, and one worth looking at closely instead of glancing at from across a room. It comes from China.

What Troglodillo is

The genus was erected by Jackson in 1937 and sits in the family Armadillidae. Only a handful of species have ever been formally described in it, which tells you how little of the group has been worked through, and it is cave-associated across China and Thailand. The hobby holds more lines than the literature does. We keep the Sunset and the Soil isopod, both of them Troglodillo, the Soil one still listed under Cubaris the way most of the trade has it, and 'Green Spot' and 'Porcelain' lines circulate elsewhere in the trade. Ours sit together in our Troglodillo collection.

Humidity and airflow at the same time

This is the part that decides whether a colony holds. They want humidity of 60 to 70 per cent and they want ventilation with it, not in place of it, and those two pull against each other. Cut vents into opposing walls so air crosses the enclosure instead of sitting still, then keep roughly two thirds of the floor moist with forest moss, rotting white wood and decaying leaves, and leave the remaining third drier. Damp air with nowhere to go is the standard way a group of these is lost. Temperature runs 24 to 28°C. The Red Diablo sets the identical problem, humid air that still has to move, so anyone who has solved it there has already solved it here, and our ventilation and humidity guide covers how to build it into a box.

Lay the substrate deep enough for an animal to bury itself and moult out of sight, and cap it with a thick layer of hardwood leaf litter and moss. Protein goes in at least twice a week, whether that is fish flakes, gammarus or dried daphnia, and calcium stays in permanently as cuttlebone, oyster shell or crushed limestone. Leaf litter and white rotten wood are the standing diet under all of that, eaten steadily rather than in bursts, so top them up before they disappear.

I would call this one challenging at worst and moderate at best, and not a beginner isopod either way, because the humidity-with-airflow balance is a skill you want to have picked up on something more forgiving first. Breeding is moderate to prolific and it runs seasonally, with most of the activity through spring and summer, so a quiet autumn is the animal doing what it does, not a fault in the setup. Give a new group a few months of stability before you judge it.

Nothing is posted after a Thursday, which is deliberate, because a parcel sent later than that spends its weekend in a depot instead of with you. Colonies ride on damp sphagnum inside a deli tub with ventilation, and that goes into an outer box built from double-walled card. The service is tracked Royal Mail next-day, timed for delivery before 1pm. We put extras in over the number you ordered, and every group carries our live-arrival guarantee.