Learning how to culture springtails is one of the most useful skills for any keeper of small invertebrates.
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To culture springtails, fill a clean vented deli container with 2-3 cm of horticultural activated charcoal, moisten it until damp but not pooling, pour in a starter culture, and add a rice-grain-sized pinch of brewer’s yeast. Keep the container at 22-26°C (72-79°F) out of direct light. Tropical springtails are dense enough to harvest in 2-3 weeks. Temperate species take 3-5 weeks.
Key Takeaways
- Tropical springtails (Collembola sp. “Tropical White”) breed fastest and are the better choice for feeders. Start here.
- Temperate springtails (Folsomia candida) tolerate wider temperature swings and work better as bioactive cleanup crew in seasonal setups.
- Activated charcoal is the best beginner medium: crash-resistant, easy to harvest from via flooding, and forgiving when you overfeed slightly.
- Coco coir supports denser populations but crashes faster when overfed. Add a coco coir culture later once your charcoal rotation is stable.
- Brewer’s yeast is the standard food. A rice-grain pinch every 2-3 days is all a healthy culture needs.
- Overfeeding is the number-one crash cause, not bad luck. If yeast from the previous feeding is still visible, do not add more.
- Harvest by flooding: pour in water, springtails float up, pour them into the enclosure. No tools needed.
- Start a fresh culture every 3-4 weeks using a scoop of your active culture as the seed. Always keep two cultures running.
What Are Springtails and Why Culture Them?
Springtails (order Collembola) are tiny hexapods, not true insects, ranging from 0.5-2 mm for the species commonly cultured. Most are white or grey and visible as moving specks on the medium surface. They feed on fungi, decaying organic matter, and yeast.
A springtail culture serves two distinct jobs in a collection.
As feeders: Newborn mantis nymphs at L1 and L2, and jumping spider spiderlings, are too small to chase melanogaster fruit flies reliably. Springtails are slow enough for a 4 mm spider to stalk and catch successfully. Pair them with a fruit fly culture setup and you have every feeder size covered from day one of hatching onward.
As a bioactive cleanup crew: In humid terrariums and bioactive enclosures, springtails eat mold spores, leftover food scraps, and decaying leaf litter. They suppress the mold blooms that creep across moist substrate within days of adding food. See our isopod care guide for how springtails layer into a full bioactive stack alongside isopods.
For jumping spiders specifically, springtails matter most at the spiderling stage. Our feeding jumping spider slings guide explains exactly when to transition off springtails and onto melanogaster.
Tropical vs. Temperate Springtails
Two categories dominate the hobby. Species names vary by vendor, but the biology is consistent:
| Trait | Tropical White | Temperate White (Folsomia candida) |
|---|---|---|
| Size | 0.5-1 mm | 1-2 mm |
| Culture speed | Fast: dense in 2-3 weeks | Moderate: dense in 3-5 weeks |
| Ideal temperature | 22-26°C (72-79°F) | 18-24°C (64-75°F) |
| Temperature tolerance | Narrow; slows below 18°C | Wide; survives down to 15°C |
| Primary use | Feeders for tiny prey items | Bioactive cleanup crew; seasonal setups |
| Best for | L1 mantis, spiderlings, dart frogs | Isopod enclosures, planted terrariums |
Short version: buy tropical if you need feeders. Buy temperate if you primarily want terrarium cleanup crew and live somewhere that gets cool in winter. Tropical is the more versatile starting point for most keepers.
If you are building a bioactive jumping spider enclosure, both species are useful: tropical as feeders early on, temperate as permanent substrate residents. Our bioactive jumping spider enclosure guide covers how to layer them into setup.
What You Need (Full Shopping List)
| Item | Purpose | Estimated cost | Where to buy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter culture, tropical or temperate | Source population | $8-$15 | Josh’s Frogs, Rubber Ducky Isopods, local reptile expos |
| Deli container, 16-32 oz, clear | Culture vessel | $1-$5 | Restaurant supply stores, Amazon |
| Horticultural activated charcoal | Culture medium (recommended for beginners) | $8-$12 per bag | Garden centers, Amazon, Josh’s Frogs |
| Coco coir brick (alternative) | Higher-density culture medium | $3-$6 | Any pet store |
| Brewer’s yeast powder | Primary food source | $6-$10 | Health food stores, Amazon, homebrew shops |
| Drill bit or soldering iron | Ventilation holes in lid | Already own |
Total startup cost: roughly $20-$35 including the starter culture. After that, one bag of charcoal and one jar of yeast cover many cycles of cultures.
Charcoal vs. Coco Coir: Which Medium Should You Use?
Horticultural activated charcoal adsorbs excess yeast byproducts, which slows mold growth and keeps the culture more stable. Harvesting is simple: flood with water and springtails float to the surface. The margin for error is wider here, so beginners should start with charcoal.
Coco coir supports denser populations than charcoal at peak and costs less per setup. The tradeoff: it accumulates uneaten yeast faster and crashes more easily when you overfeed. Harvesting from coco coir means scooping substrate rather than floating, which is messier and harder to control.
Start with charcoal. Once you have the feeding amount dialed in and a reliable rotation going, add a coco coir culture alongside for higher feeder density.
Clay is a third option gaining popularity. It retains moisture well, contains calcium that springtails consume and pass to predators (a form of gut-loading), and drains better than coco coir. The Bio Dude clay substrate works well. Slightly more expensive than charcoal but worth it if you are culturing primarily for dart frogs or sensitive feeders.
How to Culture Springtails: Step-by-Step Setup
Step 1: Prepare the container
Use a clean 16-32 oz deli container, clear so you can monitor activity without opening it. Drill or melt 10-15 small holes (2-3 mm) in the lid. Springtails need airflow; without it, CO2 builds up in the container and the culture stalls. Wash the container with hot water only. No soap, no bleach: chemical residue kills springtails.
Step 2: Add and moisten the medium
Charcoal: Pour in a 2-3 cm layer. Add water slowly until you see moisture at the bottom of the charcoal but no standing water on the surface. The charcoal should feel heavy and damp. Pour off any pooled water.
Coco coir: Hydrate the brick, then squeeze a handful. It should clump but not drip. Add a 2-3 cm layer.
Step 3: Add the starter culture
Pour or shake the culture onto the medium. A good starter culture has springtails at multiple life stages: eggs, juveniles, and adults. You should see movement within an hour. Let them settle for a few hours before adding food.
Step 4: First feeding
Add one rice-grain-sized pinch of brewer’s yeast powder, roughly 10-20 mg for a 16 oz container. Tap it onto the surface in one spot and leave it. This is almost certainly less than you are imagining. Overfeeding is the most common beginner mistake: excess yeast grows mold faster than springtails eat it, CO2 spikes inside the container, and the culture crashes.
Step 5: Close and store
Put the lid on and place the container at 22-26°C (72-79°F) in a spot out of direct light. A room-temperature shelf works for tropical springtails in most homes. Only use a heat mat if your space regularly drops below 20°C.
Check every 2-3 days:
- Springtails moving actively on the medium surface and container walls
- The yeast spot shrinking (they are eating)
- No large patches of green, black, or grey mold
Feeding Schedule
Brewer’s yeast is the go-to food: high in protein, palatable to springtails, and it does not introduce pathogens the way fresh fruit can. Active dry bread yeast works in a pinch but has lower nutritional value.
| Culture density | How much yeast | How often | Sign you fed too much |
|---|---|---|---|
| New culture, first two weeks | 1 rice-grain pinch | Every 3-4 days | Mold visible within 24 hours |
| Established culture | 2-4 rice-grain pinches | Every 2-3 days | Uneaten yeast visible at next feeding |
| Dense, active culture | Up to 1/4 tsp per 500 cm2 surface | Every 2 days | White hyphal film forming on yeast |
The rule: if yeast from the previous feeding is still visible, do not add more. Springtails without food for a few extra days are fine. Springtails buried under a mold bloom are not recoverable.
Other food options: finely ground oats, dried mushroom powder, or a few cooled cooked rice grains. Many keepers rotate these with yeast to vary the diet, especially for cultures intended to gut-load feeders.
Timeline: When Can You Harvest?
| Species type | Visible population growth | Ready to first harvest | Peak density |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tropical White | 1-2 weeks | 2-3 weeks | 4-6 weeks |
| Temperate (Folsomia candida) | 2-3 weeks | 3-5 weeks | 6-8 weeks |
“Ready to harvest” means you can remove springtails without denting the breeding population. After a flood harvest, dense coverage should remain on the medium and container walls. Do not harvest in the first week regardless of how active the culture looks.
How to Harvest Springtails
The flooding method (charcoal cultures, recommended)
- Pour room-temperature water into the culture container until it sits about 1 cm above the charcoal surface.
- Springtails are hydrophobic and float to the surface immediately.
- Wait 30-60 seconds for them to concentrate.
- Pour the floating springtails and water directly into the enclosure, or scoop with a small cup or pipette for more control.
- The charcoal stays in the container. Water drains back down through it.
No tweezers, no counting, no hands-on handling. The springtails self-select to the surface.
Transferring from coco coir cultures
Coco coir floats, so flooding gets messy. Instead, scoop a small amount of the surface substrate with a spoon and tip it into the enclosure. Alternatively, place a piece of fruit inside the culture for 10-15 minutes. Springtails aggregate on it. Move the fruit, covered in springtails, directly to the target enclosure.
Using Springtails in a Bioactive Enclosure
For isopod setups and planted terrariums, introduce springtails directly to the substrate, not a feeding dish. They live in the moist top layer and move through the soil on their own.
How to introduce them:
- Complete the enclosure setup (substrate, plants, hides) before adding springtails.
- Ideally, seed springtails 3-5 weeks before adding your primary inhabitants. This gives them time to establish a population.
- Pour a small flooding harvest over the substrate surface.
- Springtails distribute into the soil within 24-48 hours.
- Keep one corner of the enclosure slightly wetter than the rest. Springtails concentrate in moist zones.
Springtails and isopods coexist without competing for the same resources: isopods handle larger debris, springtails handle microfungal and bacterial cleanup. Our how to start an isopod colony guide covers when to introduce each relative to the other. For the isopod food side, see our isopod feeding guide.
Why Cultures Crash (and How to Prevent It)
Overfeeding leading to mold takeover. Too much yeast grows mold faster than springtails can consume it. Mold dominates the medium, CO2 rises, and springtails die. This is the number-one crash cause. Prevention: feed less than you think you need. If mold appears, stop feeding completely and let the springtails eat through it. Only physically remove mold or restart the culture if the springtail population stops moving entirely.
Drying out. If the medium goes dry, springtails desiccate within days. Check moisture every 3-4 days. The charcoal should feel heavy and damp. If it feels light or the walls show no condensation, mist lightly with room-temperature water. Do not flood it: one or two sprays of a mister is enough.
Temperature too low. Tropical springtails slow down significantly below 18°C and stop reproducing entirely below 15°C. If your space dips in winter, keep cultures on a shelf near a gentle heat source or on a low-wattage heat mat set to 22°C.
Mite contamination. Soil mites hitchhike in on starter cultures or substrate bags, appearing as tiny brown or red specks moving erratically among the springtails. A small mite population is manageable. A full infestation outcompetes springtails for food. Buy from reputable suppliers, keep cultures sealed, and quarantine new cultures for one week before placing them near established ones.
The Rotation Rule
No single springtail culture lasts indefinitely. After 6-8 weeks, waste accumulates and density declines. The culture is not crashed, it is simply aging out. The fix is rotation.
Keep at least two cultures running at staggered stages:
- Every 3-4 weeks, start a new culture by scooping a spoonful of your active culture (substrate and springtails together) into a fresh container with new medium.
- When a culture slows down or reaches 6-8 weeks, retire it into a bioactive enclosure instead of discarding it. The remaining springtails establish themselves there.
- Always maintain a backup. If one culture crashes, the other keeps you fed.
Running two cultures costs almost nothing extra in supplies and eliminates the “crashed culture, nothing to feed” emergency that catches every keeper off-guard at least once.
Product Picks
Tropical Springtail Culture
Cultures arrive genuinely dense when ordered from reputable sellers. Tropical white springtails establish quickly and quality cultures are consistently free of mite contamination. This is the recommended starting point for keepers who have not cultured springtails before.
Category: Starter culture | Where to buy: Amazon, Josh’s Frogs | Price: approximately $9-$12
Horticultural Activated Charcoal
Available at most garden centers and on Amazon. Particle size is right for springtail cultures: not so fine that it compacts, not so coarse that it dries out fast. One bag is enough for 4-6 cultures. This is the medium that most experienced keepers default to.
Category: Culture medium | Where to buy: Amazon, Home Depot, Walmart garden section | Price: approximately $8-$11
Brewer’s Yeast Powder
Unflavored, finely powdered, and inexpensive per ounce. The version sold for human supplemental use works perfectly for springtails. A single 1 lb bag lasts for years of cultures. Buy it once and do not think about food sourcing again.
Category: Culture food | Where to buy: Amazon, health food stores | Price: approximately $10-$14
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does it take for a springtail culture to produce enough to harvest? Tropical springtails are harvestable in 2-3 weeks at 22-26°C. Temperate species take 3-5 weeks. “Harvestable” means the population is dense enough that removing some does not set back breeding. If you can see springtails covering most of the medium surface and climbing the container walls, you are ready.
How many springtails do I need to start a culture? A typical starter culture from a reputable seller arrives with hundreds to a few thousand springtails. That is more than enough. For a 16-32 oz culture container, any amount from 100 springtails upward will establish. What matters more is that your starter culture contains multiple life stages, not just adults.
Can springtails escape from my enclosure? Yes, but they need extremely moist or wet conditions to travel far. In a properly set up enclosure with a secure lid, springtail populations stay near the substrate where moisture is highest. They will not colonize your home. If you see them on the outside of an enclosure, it is a sign of excess moisture near the rim.
What is the difference between tropical and temperate springtails for bioactive setups? Tropical springtails breed faster and work better as feeders. Temperate springtails are more temperature-tolerant and establish more reliably as permanent cleanup crew in enclosures that have temperature fluctuations. For a tropical jumping spider or mantis enclosure held at 24-26°C, either works as cleanup crew, but tropical will maintain higher density. For an isopod colony guide or a cooler temperate setup, temperate springtails (Folsomia candida) are more stable.
Why do my springtails keep dying? The most common causes are: overfeeding (mold outcompetes them), drying out (medium lost moisture between checks), temperature too low (below 18°C for tropical species), or mite contamination from an unquarantined starter. Check all four. The most likely culprit in a culture less than three weeks old is overfeeding. In a culture older than four weeks with no recent mold, check moisture and temperature first.
How do I use springtails as feeders for mantis nymphs? Use the flooding method to harvest a small amount of springtails with water into a shallow dish or directly into the nymph enclosure. For L1 nymphs, 20-30 springtails per feeding session is enough. Springtails that are not eaten immediately survive in the moist enclosure floor and continue to move, prompting the nymph to hunt. Our mantis feeding guide covers size-appropriate prey at each instar.
Springtail cultures are one of the highest-value investments you can make when keeping small invertebrates: cheap, nearly self-maintaining, and essential the moment you have a freshly hatched mantis or a spiderling too small for fruit flies. Get one started now, before you need it. By the time your oothecae hatch or your spiderling arrives, your culture will be at peak density and ready.
For the complete feeder picture for jumping spiders, our feeder insects roundup maps every prey item to spider size. And if you are feeding a full-grown jumping spider colony, see what do jumping spiders eat for the life-stage breakdown.