Giant Canyon Isopod — Fact Sheet

Porcellio dilatatus · Giant Canyon Isopod

📋 At a glance

🏠 Enclosure

• For 10-20 animals: at least 30 × 20 × 15 cm; increase floor area as the colony consumes its litter.
• Use fine side ventilation, with more openings over the drier end; the lower layer must still retain moisture.
• Quarantine new stock for 30-60 days with separate tools; service inside a catch tub and never release substrate outdoors.

🪨 Enclosure furniture

• Provide 6-8 cm of pesticide-free topsoil, deciduous leaf mould, and crumbled white-rotted hardwood for burrowing and feeding.
• Cover most of the surface with safe hardwood leaves; add cork flats and a moss pocket at the damp end.
• Keep cuttlebone, limestone, or calcium carbonate available; avoid fertilizer, fresh manure, conifer wood, and coir-only substrate.

💡 Lighting

• UVB is not required.
• Use 10-14 hours of diffuse room or plant light with dark retreats under cork.
• Keep the container out of direct sun; display lamps must add negligible heat.

🌡️ Temperature

• Local warm point: 21-24 °C

• Warm zone: 17-24 °C

• Cool zone: 15-19 °C

• Night: 15-21 °C

• A cool gradient is safer than constant warmth; prolonged temperatures above 26-27 °C narrow the moisture margin.

• If heating is needed, warm one outer wall with a thermostat, never the whole base.

💧 Humidity & water

• Target about 55-75% RH as a secondary reading; substrate condition is more important.
• Keep roughly one-third consistently damp, a transitional middle, and a less-wet end that remains moist below the surface.
• No water dish is needed. Pour water into the damp corner; condensation or sour odour means excessive water or weak airflow.

🥬 Diet

Feed freely:

• Decayed hardwood leaves
• Soft white-rotted hardwood

In moderation:

• Carrot, squash, sweet potato, mushroom, or courgette, two or three times weekly
• A small weekly portion of dried shrimp, gammarus, or quality fish food

Avoid:

• Mouldy food, fresh manure, seasoned food, conifer material
• Large wet portions left longer than 24-48 hours

Supplements:

• Cuttlebone, limestone, or plain calcium carbonate available continuously
• Protein is supplementary; it does not replace leaf-and-wood detritus

🩺 Health — warning signs

• Incomplete moults → damp refuge lost, calcium shortage, or excess heat
• Whole colony on the surface → lower substrate flooded, sour, or overheated
• Slow reproduction → shallow exhausted substrate, very cool conditions, or too little protein
• Grain mites and fungus → excess wet food and insufficient cross-flow
• Escapes or unidentified hitchhikers → inadequate lid, mesh, or quarantine

Isolate a declining colony, correct the environment first, and seek an invertebrate-experienced exotic veterinarian or specialist laboratory when unexplained losses continue.