---
title: Powder orange in a terrarium | Glass Jar Garden
description: Powder orange / powder blue isopod (Porcellionides pruinosus): A quick, busy isopod that breeds fast on the surface. Needs eats litter 1.5 mg/day each, eats...
url: https://glassjar.garden/guide/critters/porcellionides-pruinosus/
---

Critters

# Powder orange / powder blue isopod
Porcellionides pruinosus

Fine in a closed jar · Grazes plants

A quick, busy isopod that breeds fast on the surface.

## 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, frass, fungi, animal waste, fish food protein (Foods it lives on; the jar feeds it from whichever of these it has.)

- Humidity: 60 to 90 % RH (Air moisture it needs.)

- Temperature: 18 to 30 °C (Comfortable range; beyond it the colony suffers.)

- Doubles in: 45 days (Time for the colony to double with plenty of food.)

- Lives: 712.5 days (How long one animal lives.)

## Care

- Size: 8 to 12 mm

- Moisture: Moist

## What kills it

- total substrate drying without a moist refuge
- flooding
- sustained temps above ~32 C
- low protein/calcium (cannibalism, bad molts)

## Description
It lives about a year in the wild and two to three years in captivity. Because it tolerates drier spots than dwarf whites, it suits open or mixed-moisture setups. Always leave a moist refuge, and offer protein and calcium for healthy molts.

Also called powder blue, powder orange, plum woodlouse.

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

## Sources

- [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porcellionides_pruinosus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porcellionides_pruinosus)
- [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodlouse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodlouse)

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

[Miniature awlsnail](https://glassjar.garden/guide/critters/subulina-octona/) · [Silver springtail](https://glassjar.garden/guide/critters/sinella-curviseta/) · [All critters](https://glassjar.garden/guide/critters/)