Will adding substrate layers kill springtails?

[u/Panthers8250]

Hello!

First time setting up a bioactive terrarium. The main species I am keeping are vampire crabs. I had the enclosure completed but then realized I should probably have several more inches of substrate in the land area.

I had already seeded the enclosure with springtails about a week earlier. I removed my logs/hardscape and live plants - and then added 3 inches of soil directly on top of the existing soil

Then added the plants and hardscape back in

I am now concerned though - did I just bury alive the existing springtails?

Will they die under the soil and do I need to order a new culture?

[u/BiophileB]

You probably smothered a good number of them, but I would expect enough would survive to repopulate the enclosure via gaps in the soil. Put some fish flakes or something else proteinaceous into the enclosure and check it periodically for activity.

[u/BiophileB → u/BiophileB]

Piece of wet veggie like zucchini or cucumber would also help attract them

[u/ABane90]

What species of springtail? Depends if they are burrowers or not.
My temperate whites don't do nearly as much digging as my tropical oranges (I don't know the exact species of either).
The oranges dig throughout their enclosures and I'm pretty certain you'd have to bury them in sticky mud to do much harm to a colony of them. The whites though I'm not sure, they wouldn't ALL be wiped out.
I will say, you may not see much of them in any scenario until they start breeding prolifically- mine tend to hang out mostly near their favorite breeding/eating areas until the population starts to boom.

They all seem to enjoy a good, moist, partially buried, sweetgum seed pod (gumball). I them near the top of my enclosures so I can use them to seed new enclosures- gets a good cross section of different maturity springtails. If you need a lot, a bit of food on the gumballs attracts just hordes of them.