Critters
Silver springtail
Sinella curviseta
Closed jar only
A silvery springtail that jumps farther and copes with drier soil.
What the simulation uses
- Eats litter
- 0.002 mg/day each
- Dead leaves one animal shreds a day, turning them back into soil.
- Eats mould
- 0.004 mg/day each
- Mould one animal grazes a day, keeping fuzz and grey mould down.
- Colony at most
- 95,000 per m²
- How many the floor can feed when food is plentiful; less food, fewer.
- Starving loses
- 15 % a day
- How fast a colony thins when the jar cannot feed it.
- Eats
- mould, fungi, biofilm, decaying plant, frass
- Foods it lives on; the jar feeds it from whichever of these it has.
- Humidity
- 80 to 100 % RH
- Air moisture it needs.
- Temperature
- 18 to 27 °C
- Comfortable range; beyond it the colony suffers.
- Doubles in
- 15.5 days
- Time for the colony to double with plenty of food.
- Lives
- 145 days
- How long one animal lives.
Care
- Size
- 1.5 to 2.5 mm
- Moisture
- Moist
What kills it
- substrate drying
- flooding
- temps above ~30 C
Description
Sold as an alternative to the white springtail, it grazes mould, fungi and the film on rotting matter. Keep the soil damp but never flooded, and below about 30 °C.
Also called slender springtail.
Estimated, where sources were thin: size_mm; temp_c; breeding (all fields); lifespan_days; reproduction mode assumed sexual; no species-level care or lab source fetched.