Porcellionides pruinosus
Julia Palmer · CC-BY-SAHarmless. No bite, no sting, nothing that reacts with skin. It is a woodlouse in a bright colour form, kept as a terrarium cleanup crew.
The wild species is near-global, including across the United States. The orange form is a captive-bred colour morph rather than a separate animal.
In captivity, bioactive terrariums and culture tubs. The wild form lives under bark, in compost and around farmyards.
It breeds quickly, tolerates a wide range of conditions and recovers from mistakes, which is why it is the isopod most people start with. In a bioactive enclosure it eats mould, decaying leaf litter and animal waste, which is the entire job it is kept for. The powdery bloom on the shell is a wax layer that helps with water loss and rubs off when handled.
Nothing outdoors. In a culture, the common mistakes are a tub that is uniformly wet — which rots the substrate and crashes the colony — and no calcium. Keep one end damp and one end dry, add leaf litter and a cuttlebone, and they largely run themselves.
Not really. They are a captive colour form of a widespread woodlouse, Porcellionides pruinosus. The orange is selective breeding rather than a distinct animal.
Rarely, if there is enough decaying material for them. A colony with no leaf litter and nothing to break down will start on soft new growth, which is a feeding problem rather than a behaviour problem.
They climb better than most isopods and are quick, so a loose lid will lose some. They cannot establish in a house, though — they need constant damp.
Identify another animal from a photo or return to the Isopods guide.
Last reviewed 2026-07-30. We identify, we don’t diagnose — what we can and can’t tell you.