Cage SetupLike my crickets, my 'moist buddies' live in a 9 liter 'Really Useful Box' from Office Depot. They have a three inch layer of coconut fiber, a large flat rock, a quantity of washed backyard sticks, half a small clay pot, mounds of dry oak leaves, live backyard moss, and a sprinkling of crushed oyster shell, which everyone needs to have tough shells and exoskeletons. (This can be purchased inexpensively at feed stores.)
The main thing to think about when setting up this type of enclosure is to have lots of decaying leaves and wood, surfaces to hide under, as well as a thick quantity of coconut fiber, which can be purchased at pet stores. |
Feeding and MaintenanceSnails, slugs, pill bugs and millipedes can be fed on kitchen vegetable and fruit leftovers. Steer away from excessively gooey or rotten vegetables, as these will attract gnats. Good things to try includes but is not limited to: potato, carrot, lettuce, broccoli stalk and mushroom. I like these best because they decompose slowly and do not produce a stench or a bunch of ooze like some things do. I tried strawberry, and although it was eaten on, it molded and became gooey overnight. Items like the base of a romaine lettuce stay smell-free and ooze-free for weeks, and can be nibbled on throughout that time.
Wash food before feeding to your pets, as vegetables form the grocery are often sprayed with pesticides. Providing some sort of calcium supplement is essential to the health of your colony, especially when considering the shells of young, growing snails and pill bugs. Cuttlebone, often sold in pet stores for birds, or oyster shell, sold in feed stores for chickens, are good options. Keep the cage in a dark, moderately cool place. I keep my setup on a shelf in our basement. Mainly the important thing is to keep it out of direct sunlight or heat (for example a vent.) Caring for this type of enclosure involves replacing food when it has dwindled. As long as too much food or gooey foods are not fed, the cage will naturally stay fresh smelling and free of mold, due to all those pill bugs and snails cleaning away. |
BreedingSnails and slugs are hermaphrodites, which means they are both female and male. So if you have two snails and some moist bedding they will more than likely lay eggs. Both parent snails will lay a clutch of tiny, pearl-white eggs in a burrow. The eggs will hatch in two to four weeks as tiny snails about the same size of the egg it exited.
Pill bugs will also reproduce if there are enough of them for the chance of both males and females. The females carry the eggs under their abdomen, and a quantity of happy pill bugs will likely result in a multitude of tiny white pill bugs. Millipedes readily breed as well, on the condition you find enough of them to place in the cage together. |
Great Snail, Slug, Pill Bug, and Millipede links:
- http://www.petsnails.co.uk/ - a snail care website
- http://www.bugsincyberspace.com/ - a pet bug store- sells unusual millipedes and pill bugs among many other creatures
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millipede - some interesting information on millipedes
Some good books on this subject to check out:
- More Pet Bugs: A Kid's Guide to Catching and Keeping Insects and Other Small Creatures by Sally Kneidel - this is an awesome reference book that covers a lot of useful information