Culturing Springtails: A Quick Guide

Springtails make a great live food, as well as a great cleanup crew in a vivarium. Springtails attract surface-feeding fish, small frogs, and invertebrates. Springtails are easy to culture. Learn how to culture springtails as live food or a vivarium cleanup crew. FYI: The species in the video is probably Sinella curviseta. (thanks Limede45)!

[Aquarimax]

You can culture springtails exactly as described in this video with great success, although I now tend to use deeper culture containers.

[silentglacierfang]

2:30, those springtails are so cuuute! No idea why. They're just adorable watching them bounce around in there.

[keithcook]

Again, great video. My son and I followed your instructions last weekend on creating a cricket breeding set up. So far so good on that. We are observing female crickets laying eggs like crazy all week in the screen covered dirt container. Tonight I was looking to learn more about springtails and isopods and found you have a video on those as well. I also really enjoyed this video. Very clear and concise. Thank you for posting it, I now have the info I need to move forward on my springtail / isopod project ! Your videos are proving to be very helpful for us !

[ragingcalmness]

I was struggling with my springtails but after watching this, there is hope!

[aefox]

I love your videos, everytime i look up how to culture springtails/daphnia/scuds yours are always the videos I learn from.

[wildlifeisthewealthofnatur]

I have a few species of springtails living in planting pot along with a pheidole ant colony. Ants do nothing to them. Maybe ants know how the springtails keep their colony clean by eating leftovers and molds which can be harmful for ants. And it's adorable to see a few springtails and ants coming out of soil and running here and there when i water the plants.

[CheeseZombieo]

The first time, I bought them although quite overpriced. I cycled the tank months later and lost them all by choice. Second time around, I used a wet tip end of a pencil and extracted 6 large adults from my $2 bag of Walmart potting soil (potted). I started my culture in a dish in my terrarium as that has been where they have independently cluttered on their own and multiplied like crazy within a week or two (just treated water), I’ve never had to use anything else for reproducing them.

Saved myself $15 this time around by finding them in my potting medium used for propagating my plants for the terrarium. A nice surprise.

Being fully aware of the toxic effects of fertilizer, this is a good bypass.

[ravenramsey]

Quick and to-the-point! I really enjoyed this instruction video!

I open my springtail culture, I didn't see anyting but I am low vision so I'm hoping they're still in there and still alive, and will breed

[donut]

When i am sad i just watch Aquarimax videos and i feel better!

[uvuvwevwevweonyetenyevweug]

i whanna thank you for making this video! i culture my springtails with this method in large buckets, you can only imagine the production dat im having ;)

[TomokoAbe_]

Springtails love brewer's or nutritional yeast. They will also reproduce in the terrarium but won't overcrowd. Best to culture them in a small container though.

[koosmangat]

Thanks for the video..! These springtails make good protein shakes for my bodybuilding regime!!!

[LindenEdwards]

Was able to collect about 25 springtails I added a while ago to a gecko enclosure. Previously bought as a culture. Starting a master culture from these.

[RichardBronosky]

3:00 "It won't be long before you can harvest again." What would you estimate as the time it takes for a new culture to double in population?

[magpie]

amazing video! I’m gonna try breeding them to keep my snail enclosure from growing mould, and also to feed to some hypoaspis miles that I’m trying to also breed as they eat harmful snail mites but they’re quite expensive to buy each time they get infested

[undersurfacechannel]

Great video :) Will definitely start my culture soon... thank you for sharing :)

[JTBReptiles]

Fantastic video as always. Straight to the point!

[MCrex]

Thanks for the great information, I'm excited to see my starter colony grow

[--Paws--]

I am constantly researching to see if I should culture these as some sort of janitor for my emersed plants containers. I am debating whether dwarf isopods or springtails would be better.

[thecosmicladybug]

Interesting, they ended up in my worm bin and I don't know how! They are kinda cute though. LOOK AT THEM GO! 😅