Small Pieces Of Beech Bark

Small pieces of natural beech bark — a versatile and inexpensive addition to any isopod, millipede, or bioactive enclosure. Beech bark makes excellent hides, foraging material, and naturalistic hardscape, giving your inverts shelter to retreat under and surfaces to graze the biofilm and microfauna that develop on damp wood. It breaks down slowly over time, contributing to the decaying organic matter that detritivores feed on.

Sold by Weight

Worth understanding how this product works before you order: you're buying beech bark by weight, not by the individual piece. Pieces are chosen at random from our current stock to meet or exceed your chosen weight — we never send under. This means:

• Mixed sizes — some pieces will be larger than others; you'll receive a natural assortment rather than uniform pieces
• Random selection — pieces are picked from stock to hit your weight, so each order varies
• Never under weight — if anything, you'll receive slightly over your chosen amount, never less

Choose from 250g or 500g depending on the size of your project or how many enclosures you're kitting out.

Some With Lichen, Some Plain

Because this is a natural product selected at random, the bark varies in appearance. Some pieces carry a small amount of lichen, while others are plain bare bark. Properly worth knowing this is normal and part of the natural variation — the lichen-covered pieces add extra texture and visual interest, and lichen is a welcome natural food source many isopods and millipedes will graze on. If you specifically want lichen-heavy material, our lichen sticks are a more targeted option, but the mix you'll get here is properly part of the appeal for a naturalistic setup.

Not Sterilised — Please Sterilise Before Use

Properly important: this beech bark is not sterilised. As with any natural material collected from the environment, we recommend sterilising it yourself before introducing it to an established enclosure, to avoid bringing in unwanted hitchhikers like mites, pest insects, or their eggs.

Two simple methods:

• Freezing — seal the bark in a bag and freeze for 48-72 hours, then allow to thaw before use
• Baking — heat in an oven at around 100°C for 30 minutes (this will also kill beneficial organisms, so freezing is gentler if you're seeding a bioactive setup)

After sterilising, a light spritz of water will help rehydrate the bark before adding it to a humid enclosure.

What It's Good For

• Hides and shelter — small pieces create cover for isopods and other inverts to retreat under
• Foraging surfaces — biofilm and microfauna develop on damp bark for inverts to graze
• Millipede setups — naturalistic hardscape and supplementary material for millipede enclosures
• Bioactive hardscape — breaks down slowly, adding to the substrate's organic content over time

Browse our full accessories collection for leaf litter, cork bark, lichen sticks, rotting wood, and the other components that make up a proper bioactive setup.