Spotted Fire Millipedes (Centrobolus sp.)

You can buy this millipede captive-bred, and ours are. That is worth leading on, because the millipede side of the hobby still runs on wild-collected imports, and few species breed readily enough in a home enclosure for anyone to bother. This one does. A mixed group in deep, well-made substrate gets on with it without intervention from the keeper, which is the honest reason to choose the animal ahead of its colour.

It is sold here as the Spotted Fire Millipede and traded as Centrobolus splendidus, and both halves of that want holding loosely. The described splendidus rests on a single poor collection at Xai-Xai in coastal Mozambique and is listed as Data Deficient, which leaves the species label doing more work than the evidence will bear. The trade name is no firmer: what these animals show is banding, not spotting. The genus and the ranks above it are the reliable part: Centrobolus, family Pachybolidae, order Spirobolida, out of southern Africa.

The colour is what registers first. The body runs bright red through to red-orange with a hard gloss on it, the head is black, and black markings band across the segments, breaking the red into sections along the body. Juveniles come through pale and build the colour over successive moults, so a young animal takes a while to look like the finished article. Adults settle at around 6cm, which is compact for a millipede and puts a whole group inside a modest enclosure.

It coils flat, and it climbs

Pill millipedes, a separate group with no bearing on this one, shut up into a sphere. Startle a Spotted Fire and you get a coil, wound flat with the head at the middle. Chemistry backs it up: Spirobolida push benzoquinones through pores along the flanks when something leans on them hard. The mark it leaves on fingers is brown and slow to fade, and it irritates skin if it is left on. The reason to wash promptly, though, is that in an eye it causes a chemical burn that needs treating, so use soap and do it before you touch your face. The second habit shapes the build, because this is an avid climber. It wants heavy branches and slabs of bark to climb as much as it wants floor area, and the lid has to close without a gap.

The substrate is the food

Go at least 10cm deep and treat that depth as the diet rather than bedding, since they eat their way through it. Build it from leaf humus, white-rotted hardwood crumbly enough to break between your fingers, and hardwood leaf litter on top, kept slightly moist rather than wet, with one damper corner and a drier zone so the animals pick their own position. Hardwood only. Softwood and pine are toxic to millipedes. Hold 22 to 26°C and humidity around 70 to 80 per cent, with enough ventilation to stop the air turning stale but not so much that the substrate dries through. If a cold room needs help in winter, mount the heat on the side of the enclosure through a thermostat and never underneath, since the base of the substrate must stay the coolest part. Calcium is not optional, so leave cuttlebone in permanently. Soft vegetables and a little fruit go down well a couple of times a week.

Nothing about the behaviour is difficult. They are peaceful with each other and with anything sharing the enclosure, communal by default, and forgiving enough to be a sensible first millipede. Breeding asks for nothing clever: house both sexes together, keep the depth and calcium right, and leave the young where they hatch, since they need no separate treatment. The Red Ring is the other Centrobolus we keep, a South African animal of confirmed origin, banded sharply in red and black and nothing like this one to look at. The Burmese Beauty and the Amber Millipede sit close on size. The wider millipede range holds everything else we stock, and how to build a millipede substrate covers the layers in detail.

Nothing leaves after a Thursday, which keeps our parcels out of a weekend in a depot. Animals travel over damp sphagnum in a vented deli tub, cushioned by a box of double-walled card, on a tracked next-day Royal Mail service, before 1pm. Groups are sent holding a few more than the count ordered, with live arrival guaranteed.