Porcellio hoffmannseggi “brown”

Maybe it’s happened to one or the other of you. You buy an isopod breeding set and again and again you will see some colourful surprises. It can even go so far that in this approach, the color mutation will prevail all by itself. Jackpot!

If you buy an isopod breeding set from a hobby breeder, the probability is high that the animals contained in it are partly siblings. If the parents have passed on colour peculiarities in their genes, the first generation of colour morphs has already been purchased. Since this offspring carries this heterozygous conspicuity within them, they look like normal P. hoffmannseggi and nobody would suspect a mutation in these isopods.

We had a similar situation with a Porcellio hoffmannseggi breeding approach. More and more brown P. hoffmannseggi appeared in the tank, in the end they made up a quarter of the total breeding batch. For this reason I advise everyone who buys an additional breeding set to his existing animals to separate it for the time being. This gives you better control over your offspring and any mutations that may occur.

Altogether we separated 15 P. hoffmannseggi “brown”. In this case it is of course a perfect condition to get a fast colour stability in this strain.

I assume that I might have to sort something out in the first offspring and that the 2nd generation will be color stable. Of course I will keep you informed about this beautiful color mutation.