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You can buy a substrate online, which is a substrate made from a series of materials such as mulch, leaf litter, and many natural substances, it is used as a subtrate when breeding scarab beetles but also makes a perfect and healthy substrate for millipedes.
Alternatively you can make your own!
Things you need are..
Leaf litter such as Oak, Beech and Sycamore,
Mulch, which is basically wood that is really rotted and crumbles in your hand, best is Beech for this,
Organic compost or coco humus,
Moss, spagnum or natural,
and basically what you do is get a bucket, put several scoopfulls of compost or coco humus into it, chuck in lots of leaves, mulch and moss and mix it all up thoughroughly until everything is eaqually mix together.
Spagnum moss
Oak leaves
Organic compost
You can house millipedes in different ways, if these are a pet and you want them on show then a plastic or glass tank is fine, make sure it has a secure lid though with fair ventilation.
Breeders and collectors need the cheapest option, stackable storage tubs are a great way of housing millipedes, they are cheap, secure and come in an amazing array of shapes, colours and sizes.
Now you have your substrate and tank you need to set it up ready for your millipede, your substrate needs to be at least 6 inches deep, millipedes need their substrate deep as they like to burrow and need to burrow to shed their exoskeleton when they grow, this is a very important time in a millipedes life, at this stage they are very vunerable, disturbing a millipede that is shedding can be fatal, thats why it is very important not to ever dig up a millipede, they can be gone for weeks at a time when shedding before resurfacing and however tempting it is to just check up on it, you mustn't! When a millipede dies it will usually die above ground or just below the surface.
Ok, so now the substrate is in you can add extras, millipedes like hiding places, beng nocturnal they will hide most of the day and come alive at dusk.
For this you can add some bark pieces for them to hide under, also a layer of moss can act as a blanket and the millipede can hide uder it, of course you should have some peices of damp rotting wood in your tank anyway, these make great hiding places too, and leaf litter is a very natural way or providing shelter.
A piece of cork bark placed up against the back of the tank provides a perfect place for the millipedes to hide.
You can add some branches for the millipedes to climb, especially the more aboreal species, and it gives the tank that bit more of a natural look.
Some people will add a water bowl for millipedes, but with pebbles in the bottom to prevent it from drowning, to be honest a water bowl isn't needed, millipedes get a lot of liquids from the food they eat but also you should be spraying the tank everyday and keeping it humid, the millipede will drink from droplets of water.
A water mister
Tank setups
Storage box setups
Millipedes ideally shouldn't be cleaned out, eventually a bacteria builds up in the soil, this is very important to the millipede and keeping it healthy, when you clean a millipede out you get rid of all that bacteria, its like removing the protective slime film from a fish, they immediately become more vunerable to infection and desease.
If you are to clean a millipede tank out, you can do half cleans which is removing half of the substrate and replacing with new, this should only be done every couple of months at least, to give time for the bacteria to build up again.
The only time you should do a full clean out is when you have an infestation of harmful mites or infection, then you must fully clean the tank out and quarentine millipedes.
