Gosh, no idea. They definitely have hunted them. I see babies by the food when I clean it. They hang out in the moss pit and leaves.KayedeeLove<3 wrote:So amazing how long did it take to grow your colony that size?!
Your crabs never come across a nest?
Sent from my SM-G550T1 using Tapatalk
They do lay eggs, but they keep the fertilized eggs in a marsupium - a brood pouch (marsupium, like marsupial).KayedeeLove<3 wrote:I read they don't like lay eggs?
Sent from my SM-G550T1 using Tapatalk
soilentgringa wrote:If you decide to breed isopods, put a vaseline ring around the top of whatever you house them in, and freeze all incoming leaf litter and chunks of wood you find for them.
Earwig got into my over a year old colony a few months ago and wiped them out.
Sent from my LGMS550 using Tapatalk
You crack me up!!LadyJinglyJones wrote:soilentgringa wrote:If you decide to breed isopods, put a vaseline ring around the top of whatever you house them in, and freeze all incoming leaf litter and chunks of wood you find for them.
Earwig got into my over a year old colony a few months ago and wiped them out.
Sent from my LGMS550 using Tapatalk
That's so sad!
Incidentally, earwig mothers are renowned for being one of the insect world's best. Strong family values, those earwigs.
Interesting observations! I did want to clarify that isopods (roly-polies) will not completely get rid of food mites. They just knock the population down while competing for resources (in this case, food). It's a "survival of the fittest" type of thing.CrabbyMommy2017 wrote:I was reading here on the board earlier this week about how roly-poly bugs will get rid of food mites, and how they're also a good food source for the crabs.
Me and my two toddlers went all around the yard with a baby food jar and collected several roly-poly bugs and placed them in the hermit crab tank. I piled up some leaves in one corner of the tank close to the crabs' water bowl and then dumped the roly-poly bugs in that corner. I put a small carrot in there for the roly-poly bugs to eat. The next morning the carrot was completely covered in roly-poly bugs. I guess they liked it! Lol.
Then the next morning after that I saw one of the crabs over in that corner hunting the roly-poly bugs. I'd say so far it's been a success. They are a little bit creepy but cuter than most bugs in my opinion.
I thought about ordering the roly-poly bugs online but after reading many articles and many threads here on the board I found that a lot of people just catch them out of their yard. After reading this from many different sources I figured it would be okay just to get them out of the yard.
One thing that I noticed when I was collecting the roly-poly bugs is that they are incredibly mean to each other! The roly-poly bugs seem to attack each other every time to put a new one in the jar. I was just using the jar for my collection. Once I dumped the jar into the tank I only saw one attack happen. I guess during the 15 to 30 minutes that they were in that jar being collected outside they didn't have much room to crawl around and got bored.
I started to get worried when I was collecting them. I was thinking to myself dang at this rate they're all going to kill each other before the crabs even get a chance to eat them!
I have noticed my isopods do occasionally fight in the tank. Nobody ever appears injured though. 
Soilentgringa, would you put the vaseline around the isopod breeding tank lid only, or on the crabitat's lid, too? Is this to prevent escape of isopods or moisture, or for another reason?soilentgringa wrote:If you decide to breed isopods, put a vaseline ring around the top of whatever you house them in, and freeze all incoming leaf litter and chunks of wood you find for them.
