4 replies to this topic

[ricardoflup]

Hi. I've been thinking about creating bioactive naturalistic setups. As part of the process I got some isopods and springtails starter colonies. I feed them yest and granule specialised feeder and occasional slice of banana. There are a tonne of springtails and isopods all right, but started to see a lot of tiny 'bugs', white, like little white spheres. Used the camera to zoom and the have tiny legs and move around.
Any idea what this can be? Some sort of pest? How harmful can they be?

[Zeiss]

These are mites and you get rid of them by cleaning the setup regularly and drying it out.

[ANTdrew]

Ugh. Mites.

[ricardoflup]

Oh, I knew it couldn't be good. Thankfully I had the isopods / springtails (and mites apparently) in a separate container so the ants are safe. Time to sanitise this and start over. Thanks

[AntaholicAnonymous]

What I do for my bioactive setups is to just take some soil, moss, plants, and whatever I need from outside.

I look for a good spot that has my ant species living there and contains the type of springtails, isopods, millipedes etc. I'd like to have. I check the ants and others for any parasites like mites and if it looks good I just add it in with no sterilization at all.

Since I wanna recreate an ecosystem in a tank functioning just as it does in nature I kidnap them right from the source.
The odds of mites taking over is minimal because you also add their natural enemies like predatory mites.

Usually I'll wait for 2 to 3 months before adding the ants after the setup is done just to see how it develops.