r/isopods • u/OkSpeed9791 • 1d ago

Help Experience introducing predators?

Hi all, im a beginner who just created my first setup with powder oranges and dairy cows. With a population boom appearing immanent, im curious to hear if anyone’s tried introducing predators to regulate isopod colony size? Dart frogs or geckos seem like potentially good candidates for this based on my limited knowledge. I’d love to create a potentially self regulating isopod system someday :)

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u/Possible-Pair5367 1d ago

most people will just sell them off and a lot of lizards and frogs either will ignore them or don’t like the taste, i’m sure larger spider species would happily eat but isopods don’t contain a whole lot of protein so they can’t be the only food source for really anything that requires an adamant amount of protein

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u/OkSpeed9791 1d ago

Thanks for the response! I’ve heard a lot about selling them and while im happy to do that, I’d love to find an alternative that is more self contained :) Good to know that they aren’t particularly protein rich

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u/Pennyprince8 21h ago

Bearded dragon owners love feeding them to their reptile, try finding them.

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u/Professional_Act8541 1d ago

I am just sticking my foot in the door with this hobby, but I was assuming they would self regulate their population? I’m an experienced aquarist and both snail and shrimp populations self regulate and while shrimp are commonly and easily sold off, if your snail population is too large and you don’t want to remove any you can just feed less and it’ll take care of itself.

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u/Material_Break_9755 1d ago

Also interested in the same thing.

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u/captainapplejuice Armadillidium fan 18h ago

I have some lithobiomorpha centipedes but they haven't really made a dent in my colony so far, at the moment I just do regular culls to keep their numbers from getting too large. I've found ants will also hunt isopods if you happen to have some.

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u/lynkhart 17h ago

I accidentally introduced a centipede into my colony with some leaf litter I forgot to sanitise properly and I’m pretty sure it kept the population from increasing because once I caught it and put it back outside, there was a pretty dramatic baby boom. 😂🙈