---
title: Common rough woodlouse in a terrarium | Glass Jar Garden
description: Common rough woodlouse (Porcellio scaber): A tough grey woodlouse that shreds leaves and lives about two years. Needs eats litter 1.5 mg/day each, eats mould...
url: https://glassjar.garden/guide/critters/porcellio-scaber/
---

Critters

# Common rough woodlouse
Porcellio scaber

Fine in a closed jar · Grazes plants

A tough grey woodlouse that shreds leaves and lives about two years.

## What the simulation uses

- Eats litter: 1.5 mg/day each (Dead leaves one animal shreds a day, turning them back into soil.)

- Eats mould: 0.2 mg/day each (Mould one animal grazes a day, keeping fuzz and grey mould down.)

- Colony at most: 400 per m² (How many the floor can feed when food is plentiful; less food, fewer.)

- Starving loses: 2 % a day (How fast a colony thins when the jar cannot feed it.)

- Eats: decaying plant, leaf litter, rotting wood, fungi, bacteria biofilm, frass (Foods it lives on; the jar feeds it from whichever of these it has.)

- Humidity: 50 to 85 % RH (Air moisture it needs.)

- Temperature: 10 to 26 °C (Comfortable range; beyond it the colony suffers.)

- Doubles in: 67.5 days (Time for the colony to double with plenty of food.)

- Lives: 700 days (How long one animal lives.)

## Care

- Size: 10 to 17 mm

- Moisture: Moist

## What kills it

- complete drying
- sustained heat above ~28 C
- flooding

## Description
It lays 25 to 90 eggs per brood and matures in about three months. It mostly feeds on the microbes covering rotting matter, so living plants are fairly safe. Avoid flooding, full drying and heat above about 28 °C.

Also called rough woodlouse, common grey isopod.

Estimated, where sources were thin: size_mm; temp_c; humidity_rh_pct; generation_days; population_doubling_days.

## Sources

- [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porcellio_scaber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porcellio_scaber)
- [rhs.org.uk/biodiversity/woodlice](https://www.rhs.org.uk/biodiversity/woodlice)

[Grow it in a jar](https://glassjar.garden/?guide=critters/porcellio-scaber)

[Common pill bug](https://glassjar.garden/guide/critters/armadillidium-vulgare/) · [Dairy cow isopod](https://glassjar.garden/guide/critters/porcellio-laevis/) · [All critters](https://glassjar.garden/guide/critters/)