Southern Pill Woodlouse — Fact Sheet

Armadillidium depressum · Southern Pill Woodlouse

📋 At a glance

🏠 Enclosure

• Minimum colony box: 30 × 20 × 15 cm; secure, smooth-sided and kept cool indoors
• Substrate: 6-8 cm pesticide-free topsoil with leaves, rotten hardwood and some limestone or clay
• Ventilation: fine cross-ventilation high on two sides; close gaps accessible to mancae
• Maintain one deep damp corner and a mostly dry, ventilated surface elsewhere
• Avoid fertilized soil, aromatic wood, conifer resin and unstable stone stacks

🪨 Enclosure furniture

• Deep deciduous litter and soft rotten hardwood as permanent structure and food
• Cork and stable flat stones spanning the gradient; small moss patch at the moist end
• Continuous cuttlebone, limestone or clean crushed eggshell
• Submitted “Magic Potion” stock requires seller provenance; pattern alone does not establish A. depressum
• Never confuse or merge it with similarly named A. vulgare Magic Potion lines

💡 Lighting

• UVB: not required
• Light: low-intensity room or plant lighting; no direct sun
• Photoperiod: 10-12 hours daily
• No specialist lamp or UVB replacement schedule is needed

🌡️ Temperature

• Basking spot: 20-23 °C

• Warm zone: 17-23 °C

• Cool zone: 15-19 °C

• Night: 14-19 °C

• Retain a genuinely cool zone; move the colony to a cooler room before adding heat

• Measure air at substrate height with a digital probe

• Avoid sustained temperatures above 25 °C and bottom heating

💧 Humidity & water

• Working range: 50-75%; moist crevice 70-85% for molts and mancae
• Pour a little water beneath moss or bark when the deep corner starts drying
• No water dish and no whole-box spraying
• Whole-lid condensation, mold between stones or wall climbing → too wet, hot or poorly ventilated

🥬 Diet

Feed freely:

• Dead deciduous leaves and soft rotten hardwood

In moderation:

• Small vegetable pieces 2-3 times weekly
• Limited fish food or dried-invertebrate protein about weekly

Avoid:

• Moldy leftovers, pesticide-exposed material and rich feeding intended to alter pattern

Supplements:

• Continuous cuttlebone, limestone or clean crushed eggshell

🩺 Health — warning signs

• Heat losses → relocate cooler and correct the gradient without sudden chilling
• Failed molts → unstable damp refuge, calcium shortage or disturbance while soft
• Mites, mold or odor → excess rich food and weak cross-ventilation
• No mancae → excessive disturbance of brooding females or an unstable moist crevice
• Magic Potion identity conflict → isolate, stop distribution under a species name and document uncertainty