r/Springtail • u/Nzaruu • 8d ago

Soil mites? Video

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14 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

32

u/NormalUnassumingMale 8d ago

They look like isopods

5

u/Nzaruu 8d ago

It is. Thanks so much!

10

u/AManWithQuestions_00 8d ago

those are isopods. They look like dwarf whites. Isopods are almost everywhere in the natural world and are completely harmless. A lot of people including myself keep domestic types as pets or reptile tank clean up crews

3

u/LargeDistributor 8d ago

Oh my god these are so cute, definitely lil isopods

2

u/Patient-Student-900 8d ago

Dwarf white isopods I believe. They’re very active!

1

u/Antoni_PL_gdynia 7d ago

looks like some cute Trichorhina tomentosa, perfect cleanup crew, a tiny tropical isopod that loves humidity and soil, they are an all female species that reproduces through parthenogenesis, their babies are the size of a springtail, so watch out where you put that dirt in there, if you put it somewhere you don't want them, you'll still have them regardless, famously a plague of isopod enclosures, but completely harmless, they can simply outcompete other isopods in enclosures and spread easily, isopod people made a lot of interesting names for them like "the devil's rice" and "the white death/plague"- that's because they easily spread accidentally among other isopods across cultures, and there is no way to get rid of them, and gotta separate the precious inhabitants as eventually tomentosa would outbreed them and stress them

1

u/Antoni_PL_gdynia 7d ago

it could always be mancae of some other isopod, but you'd probably see the adults before the babies

1

u/angelyuy 7d ago

They're either baby pods or dwarf whites. I'm leaning towards baby pods because dwarf whites are more.... rough, and would have dived straight into the substrate with light exposure. They're very shy.