---
title: Silver springtail in a terrarium | Glass Jar Garden
description: Silver springtail (Sinella curviseta): A silvery springtail that jumps farther and copes with drier soil. Needs eats litter 0.002 mg/day each, eats mould...
url: https://glassjar.garden/guide/critters/sinella-curviseta/
---

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.

## Sources

- [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinella_curviseta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinella_curviseta)
- [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springtail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springtail)

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

[Powder orange / powder blue isopod](https://glassjar.garden/guide/critters/porcellionides-pruinosus/) · [Temperate white springtail](https://glassjar.garden/guide/critters/folsomia-candida/) · [All critters](https://glassjar.garden/guide/critters/)