Zebra Isopod — Fact Sheet

Armadillidium maculatum · Zebra Isopod

📋 At a glance

🏠 Enclosure

• Housing: Indoor, cross-ventilated colony tub with fine openings for mancae.
• Starter size: At least 25 × 18 × 15 cm for 10–20 animals; increase floor area with colony growth.
• Substrate: 5–7 cm of deciduous leaf mould, rotten hardwood and pesticide-free topsoil.
• Gradient: Keep about one-third damp, a transitional middle and a drier ventilated end with slight deep moisture.
• Avoid: Uniformly wet or bone-dry substrate, coir-only bedding, fertilizers, pesticides and aromatic wood.
• Keep Chocolate, Yellow and Perfect Zebra lines separately labelled if selective colour breeding matters.

🪨 Enclosure furniture

• Hardwood leaf litter covering at least three-quarters of the surface.
• White-rotted wood and cork flats spanning wet and dry zones.
• A moss pocket at the damp end.
• Cuttlebone, limestone or clean calcium carbonate available continuously.
• Place heavy stones on the enclosure floor or stable supports, never on loose burrowing substrate.

💡 Lighting

• UVB: Not required; no specialist lamp or replacement schedule is needed.
• Cycle: 10–14 hours of diffuse room light, optionally shorter in winter.
• Provide shade beneath every cork flat and leaf layer.
• Avoid direct sun and heat-producing display lamps.

🌡️ Temperature

• Warm-side upper target: 22–25 °C

• Ambient zone: 18–25 °C

• Cool retreat: 16–20 °C

• Night: 16–22 °C

• Avoid prolonged temperatures above 27 °C; routine forced winter dormancy is unnecessary.

• Measure at substrate level at both ends.

• If heat is needed, thermostat one outer wall and leave the base unheated.

💧 Humidity & water

• Working range: 50–70%; keep the molt refuge at 65–80%.
• Moisten only the moss end when it begins to lighten; do not mist every surface daily.
• No open water dish or soaking is required.
• Failed molts or crowding only in moss suggest dryness; condensation, constant climbing or sour odor suggest excess moisture and poor ventilation.

🥬 Diet

Feed freely:

• Decayed hardwood leaves and soft rotten hardwood at all times.

In moderation:

• Carrot, squash, sweet potato, mushroom or courgette 2–3 times weekly.
• A small amount of dried shrimp, gammarus or quality fish food once weekly.

Avoid:

• Fruit-heavy diets, seasoned scraps, conifer litter and pesticide-contaminated material.
• Wet leftovers older than 24–48 hours and surplus protein that drives mite growth.

Supplements:

• Permanent cuttlebone, limestone or clean calcium carbonate.

🩺 Health warning signs

• Incomplete molts or deaths after molting → dry refuge, abrupt moisture change or insufficient calcium.
• Entire colony confined to moss → the drier zone has dried too deeply.
• Persistent climbing, condensation or sour smell → waterlogging and inadequate ventilation.
• Mites multiplying around protein → excess food or slow removal.
• Pattern line becoming mixed or inconsistent → cross-contamination; separate and relabel breeding stock.

For persistent unexplained decline, isolate the colony and consult an exotics veterinarian or experienced terrestrial-isopod specialist.