Organic Seven Mushroom Blend Powder for Isopods & Inverts

In the wild, a lot of the animals we keep are already eating mushrooms. Isopods, springtails and millipedes spend their days working through leaf litter and rotting wood that is laced with fungi and mycelium, and fungus is one of the foods they actively seek out. This powder simply bottles that part of the diet: a fine, organic blend of seven mushrooms, milled to a soft dust you can offer as an occasional supplemental food.

The blend brings together seven of the best-known edible mushrooms, reishi, chaga, shiitake, maitake, lion's mane, cordyceps and tremella, and it is worth being clear about the grade, because it is a step up from the usual animal food. This is human-grade: the same organic, food-grade powder milled for people, with no fillers, no grain and no bulking agents, just mushroom. For a detritivore that is a naturally rich mouthful, a source of protein and fibre and exactly the sort of fungal matter a cleanup crew is built to process. Each of the seven, from the dense, woody reishi and chaga to the softer lion's mane and tremella, brings something a little different, and a blend tends to hold a colony's attention better than any single dried food. I offer it as one part of a varied diet rather than a staple, alongside leaf litter, rotten wood and the occasional piece of veg.

Feeding it could not be simpler. Dust a light pinch onto the substrate or into a feeding dish once or twice a week and let them graze it down. A little goes a long way, and as with any protein-rich food it is best kept modest, so match the pinch to the size of your colony and lift out anything still sitting after a day or two. Because it is a single clean ingredient, it is easy to see what has been taken and what has not, which makes the amount simple to judge over the first week or two. Isopods and springtails usually find it within hours, and millipedes, beetle grubs and roaches will take it too.

Because it is a dry powder, keeping it dry is the whole job. Mushroom powder clumps and eventually spoils if it draws in damp, so every bag leaves here with a food-grade silica gel sachet tucked inside, the cobalt-chloride-free, non-toxic kind used to keep spices and supplements fresh. Leave that sachet in the bag rather than the enclosure, reseal after each use, and the powder stays loose and usable right down to the last pinch.

It comes in 20g and 50g pouches, so you can start small and size up once you see how your cultures take to it. It sits happily beside the other supplemental foods on the shelf, our bee pollen and brewer's yeast among them, and rounds out a varied menu rather than replacing the leaf litter and wood that should still do the heavy lifting. Add a bag to any order and give your isopods, springtails and millipedes a taste of the fungi they would otherwise be hunting down for themselves.