White Gestroi 'Zinger' Isopods (Armadillidium gestroi)

This is the acid-yellow Gestroi with the colour turned all the way down. Where the standard Armadillidium gestroi wears a dark Mediterranean body flecked with bright yellow, the White Gestroi 'Zinger' is the very same animal bleached to a soft, near-white cream. Same round shape, same easy temperament, but the pigment has been drawn back generation on generation until what is left glows pale and quiet against dark leaf litter. It is the understated end of the Gestroi story.

The Zinger is a selectively-bred line, not a lucky one-off. We isolate the palest animals and pair them together, so a pure colony holds its colour and hands it straight down. The young arrive pale and only deepen a shade as they moult. Kept alongside the yellow-spotted standard Gestroi the two will happily interbreed and the white washes out within a generation or two, so I keep my Zingers to themselves. Do the same and the line stays clean and true.

Underneath the pale coat is ordinary Gestroi toughness, which is why I am happy to hand these to first-time keepers. They are hardy, prolific and forgiving, out and about in daylight rather than skulking in the dark, and like every Armadillidium they conglobate, rolling into a tight sealed ball the instant you disturb them. Adults reach around 15 mm, and a settled group breeds steadily once it has found its feet, so a modest starter culture soon turns into a thriving one.

The one thing to hold onto is that Armadillidium gestroi is a Mediterranean animal from southern France and northern Italy, not a tropical one. It wants a moisture gradient rather than a wet box, with one damp corner kept lightly misted, the rest of the tub left to run drier, sitting somewhere around 50 to 70 per cent overall. Give it medium ventilation, with holes on opposite sides for a little cross-flow, and keep it at room temperature. In most UK homes that means no heating year-round, and the colony takes a gentle seasonal dip in its stride. When in doubt, err drier rather than wetter, because overwatering is the quickest way to lose them.

I build them a living base rather than a bag of plain coco coir, which on its own is too lean and holds water flat across the tub. Mix flake soil, rotted hardwood and topsoil into a layer that breaks down and feeds the colony, then cap it with a generous depth of magnolia leaf litter and a few pieces of bark for cover. The litter and rotting wood do most of the feeding, topped up with the odd slice of vegetable and a small pinch of protein. Keep calcium available throughout, cuttlebone or crushed shell, since they draw on it hard for clean moults, and the pale bodies show beautifully against all that dark leaf and wood.

If a pale isopod is what you are after, the Zinger sits in good company. Set it next to the chunky, neon-spotted Jumbo Gestroi for the full sweep of colour within a single species, or line it up with other pale morphs like the Milky Way and the speckled Magic Potion. The whole Armadillidium collection is worth a browse if you are putting a group together.

Every order is captive-bred, boxed double-walled around a ventilated tub of damp sphagnum and posted Monday to Thursday by tracked next-day Royal Mail, with a live-arrival guarantee and a 20% overcount as standard.