How to Keep a Springtail Culture
Last reviewed October 15, 2026
A culture is a container of springtails you keep breeding, so you always have more to seed new enclosures or feed small animals. It takes a few minutes a week once it's set up.
Setting it up#
- Container: a plastic tub with a lid. Give it a few small air holes covered with fine mesh, or keep it sealed and open it for a few minutes every couple of days for fresh air. A sealed culture left too long can crash. Taller containers make it harder for springtails to jump out while you feed them.
- Substrate: we raise ours in a mix of decomposed peat, peat moss and small pieces of charcoal, filled about halfway. The peat and moss hold moisture and give the springtails cover; the charcoal keeps the mix open and airy.
- Moisture: moisten the mix with filtered or dechlorinated water until it's damp all the way through, like a wrung-out sponge, with no standing water in the bottom. Never let it go soggy or dry out.
- Springtails: start with as many as you can. 50 to 100 is a good minimum.
To move your crew in from the container they shipped in, tip the contents onto the new substrate, or set the open shipping container inside the new one and let them walk out.
Feeding#
Brewer's yeast or nutritional yeast is the staple. Sprinkle a tiny pinch every few days (every 2 to 4 days is typical), and only when the last feeding is gone. Mist lightly after feeding.
Less is more, especially in a soil-style mix like ours, which picks up mites more easily than a bare one. Overfeeding is the most common reason cultures fail: leftover food grows more mold than the springtails can handle, uses up oxygen and invites mites. A little mold the day after feeding is normal and gets eaten.
Moisture, temperature and light#
- Moisture matters most. Springtails breathe through their skin and dry out fast. Check the culture often and mist when you feed; a culture that dries out completely can die.
- Temperature: 65–80°F. Above about 80°F they breed more slowly, and extremes can crash a culture.
- Light: ordinary room light. Direct sun can overheat the container, and complete darkness slows breeding.
How fast it grows#
Expect to see babies after a few weeks. Give a new culture at least a month to settle in before you start taking springtails out; after that it should grow quickly.
Harvesting and splitting#
- Scooping: spoon out a portion of the mix, springtails and all, and tip it into the enclosure or a new culture. This is the simplest way with a peat mix.
- Baiting: put a little yeast on a piece of bark, mist it, leave it on the culture overnight, then tap off the springtails that gathered on it. Good for moving springtails without taking substrate.
Don't empty a breeding culture all at once. It can take weeks to recover, so take a portion and let it rebuild.