Santa Claus Springtails (Neanuridae sp.)

Fat, slow and red-and-white, the Santa Claus is the least springtail-like springtail in the hobby. Where the usual cleanup crew is a fast white blur you take on trust, this one is a chunky, plump, deliberate little animal, sometimes likened to a walking gummy bear, that you can genuinely watch going about its work. It does the cleanup job and looks good doing it.

Introduction

This is a red-and-white springtail in the family Neanuridae, sold under the hobby name 'Redford White'. An honest note on that: it is identified only to family level, since most coloured Neanuridae in the trade trace back to wild founder stock that has never been placed to species, so the care here applies to the family rather than a named species. What matters in practice is that these are a genuinely different animal from the standard white Folsomia springtail: pudgy and short-legged rather than sleek, and, crucially, they do not jump. They have no furcula, the spring most springtails use to ping across a room, so they crawl slowly instead, which makes them far easier to watch and to keep in the tub when you lift the lid.

What it needs

Care is simple and suits an ordinary UK room. A small tub with a tight lid and only minimal ventilation holds the high humidity they want, and room temperature, 18 to 25°C, is fine the year round with no heating. For substrate, coconut coir with a little organic compost and crumbled hardwood works well, kept consistently damp throughout but never waterlogged, with leaf litter and a piece of bark on top. One quirk worth knowing: their suctorial mouthparts mean they feed especially well on soft mould and fungal growth, so a little controlled mould in the tub is a feature, not a fault.

Diet

They graze the mould, fungi and decaying matter in the substrate, which is exactly their job in a bioactive tank. When culturing them for harvest, a light sprinkle of brewer's yeast or crushed fish flake every few days keeps numbers building; feed sparingly, since overfeeding just grows more mould than even a mould-eater can keep up with.

Using them

Santa Claus Springtails do the same cleanup work as any springtail, taking mould and fine matter at a scale isopods cannot, so they pair naturally with any isopod, tropical Cubaris or millipede setup. The difference is that you can see these ones, and their slow, non-jumping movement means they will not startle a nervous frog or gecko the way a jumping species can. They breed more slowly than the standard white springtail, so treat them as a steady, characterful addition rather than an explosive workhorse.

Who is this for?

These suit the bioactive keeper who wants a cleanup crew that adds visible life at the soil level, and anyone who has kept standard springtails and fancies something different alongside them. They are a poor fit only where you need fast, prolific cleanup, in which case a white Folsomia culture is quicker, or where the setup cannot hold humidity. Culture kit is in our accessories range, and the rest of the range is in our springtails collection.

Every culture is sent as an established starter portion under our live arrival guarantee, dispatched Monday to Thursday by Royal Mail next day before 1pm.