Springtail Culture (Folsomia candida)
There is white fuzz on your new hardscape, or a cloud of fungus gnats came home with a bag of soil. Springtails are the answer to both, and they are the first thing that should go into a bioactive tank.
Folsomia candida eats mold and competes with the things you do not want. A culture ships in its own medium in a deli cup with a few grains of uncooked rice, not as bare animals, so it survives the trip and seeds your tank the day it lands. Feed to the population rather than to the container: one grain at a time in an established culture, because a thin culture with too much food is exactly how a mite bloom starts. You will know the culture is dense when a grain is swarmed within a day and a tap on the side sends a wave of movement across the surface.
Worth knowing, because people confuse the two: springtails jump, climb glass and vanish off it, and they have six legs. Mites crawl steadily, spread out individually and have eight. Both eat mold, so mold clearing is not what tells them apart. The glass-climbing is.
Live cultures ship Monday through Wednesday, and we hold a shipment when the forecast at either end would cook or freeze a box. Every order carries a live arrival guarantee. We ship within the United States, and not to Hawaii or Puerto Rico.
Coming soon
Not for sale yet, but these are the first live thing we expect to sell. Springtails breed in weeks rather than months, so we are aiming at winter 2027, ahead of the February build season. Join the waitlist and we will email you the week they go on sale.
Specs
- One working culture, shipped in its medium in a deli cup
- Folsomia candida, temperate white springtails
- A few grains of uncooked rice go in the cup as food
- Keep in the 70s; warmer means faster reproduction, but cups dry out above the upper 70s
- Springtails are self-regulating, so a culture holds at equilibrium and keeps producing as you harvest