Springtails 1

Mick Bajcar
Last update: 17 August, 2002

Until recently I had never succeeded in cultivating springtails in large enough quantities for them to be of use as a food source for my Dendrobates or Mantella, though they are always in my vivaria. At Frog Day in Holland in April, 1996 I bought a culture contained in an ice cream-type tub, which was teeming with springtails. From this I was able to establish how it had been made. 

The important feature would seem to be the form of the medium. This was peat, sterilised in a microwave and then compressed until it was a very solid block (easy to achieve with my weight!). The culture should then be seeded with a substantial number of springtails and fed regularly with suitably small amounts of boiled potato or flaked fish food. 

The springtails can be extracted by holding the peat ‘block’ in place with a finger while tapping them out. Alternatively they can be floated off by drowning the culture. However, the culture needs then to be re-started. With six cultures on the go at any one time, I even feed them to my larger frogs.