My snake loves to burrow and I'm concered he will mess up plant roots. I am currently culturing isopods and springtails so he isn't in the tank yet. I read an old post on here that the plants could be burried in their pots but now i'm worried that it won't be bioactive. Should i take them out of the pots and let them establish instead?
im finally almost done with my cresties bioactive set up but my last thing i need is plants for clutter!! ive been using this list to look for plants and picked out some ones i like. my only concern is that some of them are kind of like flowers and idk how they would go well in the enclosure. the list below is of my plants, plants im looking for/like, and ones that i am concerned about. ALSO one of my biggest concerns is if my gecko accidentally bites one of them, he doesnt accidentally bite any of his fake plants on his own but sometimes when he gets crickets he’ll miss and bite a plant. anyways heres the long list, if you have any recommendations or help id appreciate it a lot!!:
I own:
Snake Plant, Janet Craig, Rattlesnake Calathea
Looking for:
Sweet Alyssum, Bird’s Nest Fern, Boston Fern, Bougainvillea, Felice Aechmea Bromeliad, Earth Star Bromeliad, Coleus, Creeping Charlie, Croton Petra, Emerald Ripple, Fuchsia, Hen and Chicks plant, Hoya Plant, Jade Plant, Japanese Aralia, Mother of Pearl Plant, Piggyback Plant, Chinese Monkey Plant, Prayer Plant, Staghorn Ferns, Swedish Ivy, Wax Plant, Zebra Plant
Worried about:
Sweet Alyssum, Bougainvillea, Coleus, Fuchsia, Hen and Chicken (succulent??), Hoya Plant, Mother of Pearl Plant (succulent?), Swedish ivy
edit: my plants that i plan to get also have to withstand high humidity! not sure if thats good to add lol
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So I just setup my first bioactive terrarium for my crested gecko and I have pretty much everything but the only thing I don’t have yet are isopods since my local store didn’t have any and couldn’t order any and i was looking online and came upon Dutchiopods and I saw porcellio laevis mix on there and I was wondering if those where good and what you would recommend.
Opened my insect booster to gut load my feeders for my leopard gecko and saw all these tiny bugs that at first glance looked like springtails but don’t springtails need humidity and moisture to thrive? It’s bone dry in this small tub. So I’m not sure what these tiny bugs are?
I was covering up all but three of the ventilation holes in my snakes enclosure and that held humidity really well! However, it also made his viv start smelling a little sour so I turned his substrate and uncovered a few more ventilation holes. This makes it impossible to achieve the proper humidity levels (70-80%).
His substrate should, in theory, already hold a ton of humidity. Its a top soil/coco husk/sphagnum moss mix with leaf litter. I have a solid top enclosure from DIYcages, so air isn't escaping that way. Pouring water in the sides/along the walls of the enclosure doesn't do much. I had to scrap my last bioactive because I poured so much water in that the substrate became waterlogged and the humidity STILL wasn't high enough.
What should I do?
hi everyone! i'm coming over from the crested gecko sub about preparing to upgrade my boy's tank and setup, figured i'd throw the post here as well for more advice. the actual tank arrived yesterday and i'm looking to start setting it up through the week/next weekend. i've never done a bioactive setup before, so i'd love any advice people have. in particular if anyone has advice on if i need to let the setup "settle" with its plants and cleanup crew, or how to keep feeder insects like crickets, that would be very helpful!
additionally i'm gonna put my materials list below so if people have recommendations or i'm missing something obvious please let me know!
HAVE
GETTING DURING ACTIVE SETUP
PLANNING TO BUY
I learned a hard lesson recently. I set up a bioactive enclosure with what I thought was adequate substrate depth, maybe two inches over the drainage layer and within a few weeks my isopod and springtail populations were basically gone.
Turns out the heat from the overhead basking spot was drying out the top inch almost completely, which left the cleanup crew with barely an inch of usable habitat. Not enough moisture retention, not enough depth for them to retreat into cooler zones.
I tore it down and rebuilt with about four inches of substrate and the difference has been immediate. Population is recovering and the substrate actually holds a moisture gradient now.
What's the minimum depth people are running successfully? I clearly underestimated it.
Second bioactive build completed today!
Here’s a lil start-to-finish! Super excited that I finally got to plant it today, and introduce the second round of springtails and first batch of isopods. I think it came together really nicely considering I’m still a newbie 🥹
24x18x36” eventual home to a gargoyle gecko, once everything settles in and takes off.
also sorry if you just saw this post, I didn’t realize there was a picture limit and had to repost to include the final product.
Hi! Prepping to get a leopard gecko and having issues getting the enclosure warm enough. We have a 100w halogen bulb going through a thermostat and it won’t get over an air temp of 85 on the warm end takes a while to do so. Our house’s ambient temp is from 68 at lowest at night to 70-72 during the day, am I doing something wrong?
There's a lil pond where the Aztec looking statue is. Ran into some issues and definitely learned for next time but I think overall it’s a great one for my very first bioactive set up. This will be for two dumpy frogs. It’s an 18 x 18 x 36 and they will go in it tomorrow, so let’s see how it goes.
Hey y'all, I'm really at my wits end with this bioactive setup I've had going for a while and I'm looking for advice.
To preface, this setup is for my 3 year old male mossy tree frog. I Originally housed him in a setup that had my previous gray tree frog in it before he passed away, and then I transferred him into this current setup, but kept the basic care outline and structure of the build, i.e the amount of water to soil, plant and harscape features, and humidity, temperature, and light ratios pretty much the exact same.
He used to be incredibly active, being all over the tank, moving about at night, calling loud and proudly, but about a year or so ago he began to primarily sit in just his water basin and never move, he now rarely if ever leaves it, which makes it nearly impossible to clean without having to physically move him and strsss him out, and he rarely calls or sings beyond more than a few squeaks each night. He doesn't show any signs of infection or sickness (yet, and I pray that doesn't change) but I hate the idea that he's just sat in muck all day and isn't enriched by his habitat.
Along with all of this, the setup has turned into an absolute bog. It's flooded, snails have taken ocer as the dominant cleaner crew now as it seems all the isopods have drowned, only a few plants remain alive, and some spiders have even moved in. It smells horrendous constantly, and the only fresh water I'm able to get into it is what water I spray in it on a daily basis. I don't really kniw how to reliably drain it as the setup does nit have a drain at the bottom of it, and I don't think I can stop spraying it down each night because I fear the lack of fresh, clean water, will result in a negative outcome on my lil froggy boi's health.
So I humbly come to you all, is there any way I can salvage this setup? It really wasn't cheap and I'd like to keep as much as I possibly can since the tank is still in good condition, there's nothing wrong with the lights, and a few plants and hardscape features are still going strong.
Above all else though, I just want to make sure my lil guy is healthy and happy and enriched in his environment. What do yoh guys recommend I do? I have other bioactive setups and none of them (again, YET, and I pray it stays that way) have ended upclike this so I don't really know how to handle this, I'm out of my depth, please help
I want to keep my ackie monitor bioactive and am debating between two species: Porcellionides pruinosus 'powder blue' and Porcellio laevis 'dairy cow'. To my understanding P pruinosus does slightly better with arid species, but P laevis seems to be a hardier species.
Which species do you use with your arid enclosure and which do you think would do better from these two?
I have tons of these in my bioactive crested gecko enclosures. Looks like some kind of mite to me. Anyone know exactly what they are? They are all over the soil, branches, sides and even the tops of the enclosures, but thankfully do not seem to be interested in my gecko's.
Hello everyone!
First time posting here. I have my first pet reptile and went bioactive, but I made the mistake of adding too much water this past month while trying to get my crested gecko set up with a new mister.
In short, her substrate got oversaturated. I used a turkey baster to remove as much standing water as I could down to the drainage layer, turned off her mister, and am now playing a waiting game for her substrate to dry out which might take a bit.
I noticed these translucent/light pink worms appearing in her tank. They’re fairly thin, and my assumption is that they hatched due to the right wet environmental conditions probably from some wood or something.
Mainly I just want to know if anyone has seen these or if they’re anything I should worry about or simply leave them be while I air out her tank. A friend of mine believes they’re simply a normal kind of earth worm beneficial to the soil, but additional confirmations would help. :)
Thanks in advance!
I’ve got a setup for my gargoyle gecko but I’ve noticed it has a smell, kinda swampy smell any idea what I should do
I’ve heard to let the soil dry out…but won’t that kill all the isopods and springtails that I have inside!? I’ve sprayed mosquito bits twice this week, but I’m afraid that it’s not getting in the nooks and crannies of all the bark I’ve got in there.
Hello everyone! Im curious about the Mopani wood thats inside of my snakes Bioactive enclosure and Im wondering if its mold or just healthy bacteria that needs some clean up crews which I have yet to add 🫠
I did some research on Mopani wood and apparently its normal for this to happen???. But with my snake inside of this enclosure with 80% humidity, i want to make sure its safe and she wont get harmed. If its bad, I'll make sure to remove it immediately.
(I made sure to wash it then fire it inside of my oven for a couple hours before I added it in. Plus I left it in for a week before I moved my snake into the enclosure and everything seemed okay.)
Scott’s premium topsoil is the second brand of soil I’ve tried and it states that it has no fertilizer but both bags I got were loaded with fertilizer balls or what seems to be fertilizer balls. I tried timberline which also states no fertilizer and that one had a bunch of green fertilizer balls as well. How in the world do I find topsoil that actually doesn’t have fertilizer?????