Insect terrarium: How to build a luxury terrarium for your insects
There are many ways to create a beautiful terrarium for your animals. From plastic bins to beautifully furnished glass terrariums. This is a guide to creating a true luxury terrarium for your insects, millipedes, and more. It is especially well-suited for isopods, millipedes, mantises, cockroaches, beetles, and more. You can always adjust the height of the terrarium according to the animals you wish to keep in it.
You will need the following:
- Glass terrarium (30 x 30 x 20 cm is suitable for most isopods and millipedes)
- Terrarium soil
- Sphagnum moss
- Activated charcoal
- Cuttlebone (can potentially be omitted for mantises)
- Moss
- Dead leaves
- Bark pieces and sticks
- Bioactive animals (e.g., springtails, tropical isopods or small snails)
Instructions:
Start by laying a base layer of activated charcoal. This helps keep the terrarium healthy, breaks down waste products, and prevents bad odors. We always arrange our terrariums with the substrate sloping down toward the front. This creates a depth effect and makes the final result look more natural. You can therefore just fill the charcoal in the back 2/3 of the terrarium. On top of the activated charcoal, add a layer of good terrarium soil.
Then fill an area with pure sphagnum moss. If you make sure to keep the sphagnum moss moist at all times, you won't need to put a water bowl in the terrarium. Here, we have placed the sphagnum layer along the entire front. You can also do it in a corner depending on your preference. At this stage, you can also mix some cuttlebone into the substrate. You can use either a whole cuttlebone or crushed cuttlebones. They can easily be buried in the substrate itself. Most insects need this extra supplement of calcium and minerals. If you are making a terrarium for mantises, this can be omitted (but your bioactive animals will still love you for it).
Now it is time for some decoration. Add dead leaves and branches. Feel free to use branches with lichen on them. Both the dead leaves and the branches serve as essential basic food for the vast majority of insects and animals in the terrarium. At the same time, it makes the terrarium very true to nature.
Now we have reached the final finishing touch. Finally, add pieces of bark and live terrarium moss. The bark pieces are important hiding places for many of the insects and bioactive animals we have in the terrarium. They are essential! First of all, the live moss looks really good in a terrarium. At the same time, it helps retain moisture and is a favored habitat for many of the animals in the terrarium.
Then just add a few bioactive animals. In this terrarium, we added standard springtails and the beautiful red springtails, as well as a single unicorn snail.
Finally, you can move your terrarium animals into their new home. This terrarium became a new home for the large and beautiful Hoffmann's isopods (Porcellio hoffmannseggi).
Enjoy your setup :-)