- You can feed your millipedes a wide variety of produce. Try cucumbers, lettuce, and zucchini.
- Giant African Millipedes will also eat grapes, yams, and apples.
- You can place the produce in the cage and the millipedes will eat it over the course of the day. Just add more food when they are running low.
What do African giant millipedes eat?
African giant millipedes are primarily detritivorous, which means that they eat decomposing organic matter. Most of their nutrition should come from oak leaf litter, but they also need pieces of fresh vegetables and fruits for variety, plus a protein source like fish flakes or dog kibble.
How to get African olive millipedes in your garden?
No more waiting, let’s dive in. Giant African olive millipedes (Telodeinopus aoutii) need an enclosure with a floor space of 60cm by 40cm, a 10cm thick layer of substrate with plenty of decaying matter, a warm temperature between 22°C and 26°C and a humid environment. If you have all that, these millipedes will thrive and soon start breeding.
How do I care for a giant African millipede?
In order to care for your millipedes, you need to purchase them. Most traditional pet stores will not have this species on hand. It is best to search for a reputable online retailer. Run an internet search for "purchase Giant African Millipedes". Once you have found some companies that sell them, do your background research.
Is it possible to buy a giant African millipede?
They are often a featured attraction in bug exhibits at zoos, because they are large and interesting to observe. It is possible for you to purchase and raise your own Giant African Millipedes. Make sure that you learn how to care for them before bringing them home.
What can I feed my giant millipede?
In captivity, they can be fed a variety of vegetables and fruits cut into small pieces. Softer vegetables and fruits are best—try lettuce, cucumber (reported to be a favorite food of millipedes), tomatoes, melon, peaches, and bananas.
What do African train millipedes eat?
Diet. African giant millipedes will eat a wide range of fruits, veg and rotting leaves. Adults and young alike, eat bananas, tomatoes, melons, romaine lettuce, apples, cucumbers, and other fruits and vegetables.
What are millipedes favorite food?
A: Millipedes are omnivores and seek out both plant and animal-based sources of food. They prefer to eat mostly dead and decaying plant-based matter, but they sometimes can be found snacking away on live roots or decomposing animals when those are the only option.
How do you keep a giant millipede as a pet?
Millipede careEnsure temperature is maintained at 70 to 78°F and humidity is maintained at 60 to 70%Handle millipedes as little as possible; wash hands before and after handling.Do not allow a millipede's secretion to come into contact with your eyes, mouth or open wounds.
Can giant African millipedes eat strawberries?
Millipedes eat primarily decaying organic matter, like rotten wood and leaves, which should be available at all times for you pet millipede. Although they can solely survive on this food, it is good practice to provide supplemental food items like fruits and vegetables.
Do millipedes need a water dish?
Millipedes will drink from standing water – some people provide them with a small water bowl. But misting, providing a moist substrate, and providing fresh food will keep them hydrated.
Can giant millipedes eat spinach?
Soft and seedless fruits and vegetables can be offered to millipedes. Here is a list of foods that millipedes can eat. Vegetables like cucumber, tomatoes, mushrooms, carrots, spinach, lettuce.
What fruit and vegetables can millipedes eat?
While the majority of their diet should be composed of decaying leaves from hardwood trees (maple, oak, walnut, etc) and decaying wood, giant millipedes will eat all manner of fruits and vegetables including melons, bananas, apples, cucumbers, peaches, carrots, and romaine lettuce (but not iceberg lettuce, as it doesn' ...
What is a millipedes diet?
In their natural habitat, most millipedes are scavengers. They eat damp or decaying wood particles. They also eat decaying leaves and other plant material. If their habitat starts to dry out, millipedes will attack living plants.
Do millipedes eat fish food?
Food for millipedes Millipedes generally eat fruit, vegetables, mushrooms, moistened dry cat food, moistened fish food, rotting wood and rotting leaves.
Do millipedes get lonely?
They can live alone, but they also can live with others. They will be fine either way. Do two males get along in the same cage? Yes, millipedes can live together if there's enough room with no problem regardless of sex.
How often do you feed a millipede?
To care for millipedes, keep them in a tank that provides 5 gallons of space for each millipede and line the bottom with 5 inches of moss or bark. Feed your millipedes a variety of veggies, fruit, leaves, and wood every day by scattering it around the tank and remove the leftovers at the end of the day.
Do giant millipedes need a water bowl?
Although millipedes will gain much of the moisture that they need from their food, they will still drink from a water bowl. This should be shallow so that there is no danger of drowning and should be kept fresh at all times.
What leaves can millipedes eat?
Millipedes are detrivores eating decaying matter such as wood and leaf litter. Our bags of leaf litter are pesticide and chemical free. The leaves we use are oak, beech and birch. They also add an attractive element to your animals enclosure as well as providing hiding places for many species of invertebrates.
Do millipedes need protein?
A Useful Millipede Diet To this is added moistened insect gut-loading diet and tropical fish flakes, both of which supply necessary protein, and a bit of Forest Tortoise Food.
How long do giant African millipedes live?
between five and seven yearsIn the wild, giant African millipedes can live between five and seven years. In human care, their life expectancy increases to up to 10 years.
What Are Giant African Millipedes?
If you are looking for a quiet, interesting, exotic pet, the giant African millipede might be the pet for you! Giant African millipedes are large arthropods, and they are usually around 4-12 inches in length. They are either dark brown or black, and they have two eyes and two antennae.
What Kind of Enclosure Should I Keep Them In?
Giant African millipedes do well in a glass enclosure. Glass allows the heat to escape so that their enclosure doesn’t get too hot. A 10 or 15-gallon glass tank with a lid is a great choice for these pets, but if you want to use a larger aquarium it is definitely ok to go bigger!
What Do They Need in Their Enclosure?
Their enclosures are actually pretty simple, there are just a few things that they need to have.
Can I Keep More Than One Giant Millipede in an Enclosure?
Giant African Millipedes are not aggressive towards one another, so it is fine to keep a few of them in the same enclosure. It is important to make sure that they still have enough space and they don’t have to compete for food.
What Do They Eat?
They will eat the plant matter in their substrate, but they also eat fruits and veggies. They can eat most fruits and veggies—bananas, cucumbers, leaf lettuce, melon, sweet potatoes, and tomatoes are all good choices. Just make sure not to rinse their food in chlorinated tap water. You only need to feed them once a day.
Sources
This article is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge. Content is for informational or entertainment purposes only and does not substitute for personal counsel or professional advice in business, financial, legal, or technical matters.
About the giant African millipede
The giant African millipede has a glossy brown/black colour and with a size of 19 cm up to 28 cm (7.5″-11″), it is a real giant. There are some individuals known to grow up to a staggering 33 cm (13″). Females are generally larger than males and they can differ 5 to 10 cm in adult body length.
Housing requirements for giant African millipedes
We start this care guide with housing. A good home is fundamental for your millipedes to thrive. Although millipedes generally don’t require that much space, they need enough surface and properly sized housing. And there are some important features you should consider to create the perfect home for them. All this is discussed in this section.
Environmental conditions to keep your millipedes healthy
Your living room — or any other room for that matter — generally don’t have the climate that is required to keep this species. In the wild, these millipedes are commonly found in areas of dry savanna in Eastern and Southern Africa. So you need to recreate the natural environmental conditions in your enclosure. In this section, we discuss how.
Feeding giant African millipedes
We already discussed the food substrate. When you have a high-quality substrate, these millipedes can solely survive on the substrate’s food component alone. The substrate is the most important part to keep a healthy millipede.
Cleaning routine
Now one of the biggest advantages of keeping giant African millipedes is that there is almost nothing to clean. It makes it one of the easiest pets to keep and leaves more time to enjoy its amazing behaviour. Most important to clean regularly is to remove uneaten food at least after 3 days, or sooner when you see mould growing.
Breeding with your giant African millipedes
Breeding with your giant African millipedes needs a lot of patience. These millipedes grow slowly and it takes some time before they reach maturity. However, they are quite easy to breed. As long as you have a male and female (but even better) have multiple males and females, baby millipedes will eventually emerge from the substrate.
Physical characteristics
Appearance
- Giant African millipedes are a large arthropod, classified by a segmented body, an exoskeleton, and many, many legs! They are usually dark brown and black in color, have a rounded body, and range from 4 to 12 inches in length.
Morphology
- Starting at the tip-top of their head, giant African millipedes have two antennae and simple eyes called ocelli. They also have a single mouth or maxilla. The head segment of the millipede does not have any legs. The body of the giant African millipede has anywhere from 30 to 40 segments, with four legs per individual segment. All together, this adds to a total of up to 400 legs per milli…
Habitat
- The giant African millipede calls the rain forests of subtropical western Africa home. Giant African millipedes love warm, dark places on the rain forest floor. The most common hiding places include areas near rotting wood and burrows where they can curl up and hide.
Diet
- Millipedes are a type of organism called a detritivore. Detritivores feed on dead and decaying organic matter within their habitat. This organic matter could be things such as decaying trees, logs, and plants. All of these items are nutrient-rich for a millipede and make up most of their diet. Once digested, millipedes leave their waste or dropping...
Behavior
- This particular species of millipede is nocturnal, meaning they come out to forage for food and explore the forest at night. They will crawl along the rain forest floor looking for decomposing material to feed on. The giant African millipedes will also spend this time burrowing into a safe place to rest during daylight hours. Communication between millipedes is important! Giant Afric…
Reproduction
- Reproducing and creating more millipedes is an important part of life in the rain forest. When the time comes to reproduce, a male giant African millipede will wind around a female millipede. A few weeks later, the female will lay hundreds of eggs in a hole in the ground. After about three months, those eggs will hatch, producing a large group of baby millipedes! The babies are white …
Conservation status
- Giant African millipedes are currently thriving and doing well in their African rain forest home. However, many other species in Africa are considered threatened or endangered, and need our help.
Conservation
- You can help us bring species back from the brink by supporting the San Diego Zoo Global Wildlife Conservancy. Together we can save and protect wildlife around the globe.