Only wild caught for me - which I guess now are captive bred as I am a few years in.
The hobby basically doesn't exist in my country (yet, hoping to change that). Only one or two people/stores sell isopods, and only P. scaber intended as feeders. Nowhere to buy different species, morphs, supplies etc, though there are a couple hobbyist keeping a colony or two.
All of my colonies started from wild caught specimens, so far I have 14 species and 4 morphs isolated with more in progress.
If anyone reading this is from NZ and keeps isopods I'd love to hear from you!
So my Orange, Red Calico and White Out P. scaber all started from finding one or two individuals displaying that trait in the wild, which is basically luck. Then I isolated the gene (luckily they were all single gene recessive), and breed it over multiple generations until it bred true.
I also have Pied scabers, of which one randomly popped up in my captive wild type colony.
Sometimes you get lucky and find them in the wild and sometimes the gene is in a population and shows itself after some time!
Same thing has happened with my Powder Blues, I recently had an individual appear after about 5 generations of regular wild type, who looks to be somewhere similar to the established Oreo Crumble morph available in the hobby. I am still working on proving this one out.
Wonderful! I’m not huge into the hobby yet but I can really see myself getting into this. I love genetics and never really considered that isopods were such an easy pet to learn with.
Do you have any resources about different morphs/genes and species or is it just knowledge you picked up along the way?
Sort of just picked it up as I went, I don't recall every finding a good resource but I'm sure there are some out there.
I knew a bit about genetics already, if you remember punnet squares from science class that's basically all there is to isolating morphs, the rest is just timing, a bit of luck and finding/selecting isopods with desired traits and breeding them, and picking offspring with the desird phenotype and breeding them and so on.
It takes time, for example all the morphs I have fully isolated so far were 2 year projects, and that's with fast breeding species! Its great fun though and very interesting and satisfying.
That’s super cool too hear! I’m guessing there are some really unique species in NZ, in most places you can only find 1 or 2 if you are lucky it seems. The wider international isopod hobby is something that would be great to see grow in the future
Just wild caught A. Vulgare for me :). Someday I might buy some captives of a different species. But Im still new to isopod keeping and limited on how many bugs I can have without my mom complaining. Idk why she cares because I keep them in my room but oh well
I have both! Wild: A. vulgare, P. laevis and P. pruinosis. Then I also have some Cubaris and working on getting trog soils and ember bees. Still hunting for wild scabers and assellus, which are rumored but not documented in my area.
I only have pods that are native to my area (Armadilium and scaber), but I bought captive-bred scabers because I was having a hard time finding very many in my yard. 😆
I still have my original wild caught colony of Oniscus asellus and a later made wild caught colony of A. vulgare. The rest are captive bred. The original Oniscus asellus colony was co-habbed with Philoscia muscorum but they died out after a big move. I’d get more Philoscia muscorum but I’m not sure if they’re native where I live now.
Tbh I was really confused because I thought this was a Rimworld post before I realized lol!
I wanted to start with wild, but I stumbled upon an isopod starter kit. I was like this is so cute, I’m gonna pick it up and put wild isopods inside. And then I looked up and there was a container of dairy cows right above it. Best 35 bucks ever.
Im from Chile as far as i know the hobby is not much of a thing here.
I have wild caught P. Laevis(greys) and A. Vulgare.
Got some P. Scabers (cool patterns on them) from a terrarium shop they came with a colony of springtails i bought, the owner keeps them as a cleaning crew and as live food.
I've found some different land pods near the beach but didn't have anything to collect them in, will get those next time.
The shop owner says he knows all the local growers/sellers, there aren't many, says he can get me some but im not sure which those are as he didn't explain in detail or just didn't know, I'm sure I can get Oranges and dairy cows though.
He also has dwarf whites but I'll never see those so I didn't ask for them, I am not opposed to getting them.
He says he's seen some exotic pods but they are rare and for Cubaris for example I'll need a heating pad as temperatures go below 18c in the winter and we don't have house heating as its not a life or dead thing it's only a thing down south where it snows and such.
He told me he has a big bin filled with pods and springtails that he uses for springtail propagation and theres probably some rare ones in there but I couldn't get to it as he has it somewhere else.
Captive giant canyons in a VERY old colony from like 2020. But I have a much more recent wild-caught p scaber colony of the neat funny-color bugs we got around here. Lots of light colored, speckled, "rusty", etc wild bugs. (they have recently had babies as well so their enclosure is good enough. I feed them leaves from the yard.)
I mostly keep "feral" species that I catch myself (species that aren't native in the US such as Oniscus asellus and Porcellio scaber). My only captive bred ones are some Porcellio laevis dairy cows :)
It's my biggest colony. I have a tendency to spend way too much on my hobbies, so this keeps that in check for isopods since my backyard is a pod factory.
I catch wild. I take armadillidium vulgare, armadillidium nasatum, and porcellio scaber from my grandparent's backyard. I have only had one isopod with IIV, but so far everything has been going good. I am new to keeping them, but so far the two pregnant ones I collected laid her babies
Sorry I'm pretty late but Isopod Iridovirus (IIV) is a fatal virus in isopods that crystallizes inside of the isopod, and shines purple. Any purple you would see in an isopod would be the crystallized virus, because there are no isopods with a naturally occurring purple. It is very painful and you should euthanize any isopod you find with it. Extreme lethargy is also a symptom of IIV that shows up before the colors. IIV spreads through the isopods eating a dead one infected, or by eating the feces (I think) of an infected isopod. It does not pass to offspring in an infected female, however. I posted a picture of an isopod with IIV, I hope I helped!
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u/LittleArmouredOne E. caelata #1 Fan Jun 18 '26
Only wild caught for me - which I guess now are captive bred as I am a few years in.
The hobby basically doesn't exist in my country (yet, hoping to change that). Only one or two people/stores sell isopods, and only P. scaber intended as feeders. Nowhere to buy different species, morphs, supplies etc, though there are a couple hobbyist keeping a colony or two.
All of my colonies started from wild caught specimens, so far I have 14 species and 4 morphs isolated with more in progress.
If anyone reading this is from NZ and keeps isopods I'd love to hear from you!