How do the pathogens -- primary pathogens with direct life cycles, as well as and especially opportunistic bacteria -- get exported or inactivated?
Nitrogen and phosphorus aren't particularly problematic for ball pythons, but I'm wondering how the enclosure gets sized to deal with whatever quantities of waste are expected. A ball python in a 4 x 2 foot enclosure is easily 100 times the bioload as is the setups that "bioactive" attempts to imitate (that is, dart frogs), and the waste from a BP is much less evenly distributed. Those enclosures have water flushing out wastes and pathogens (just as in natural environments, at least any that feature rivers and other surface water bodies that are sinks and transports for organic waste), have a very high plant mass, use substrates that are optimized for microfauna (high void space to volume) and have additional nutrient export mechanisms in the forms of (a) display animals consuming the microfauna for another cycle of the nutrients, and (b) export through regular offspring production and removal from the system.
I guess my thought is that after running more than a dozen such enclosures for roughly six years I don't see the long term functionality in such a very simplified system, even aside from the very high bioloading. The amount of plant trimmings that would have to exported to account for the nutrients in a rat per week would be more than can be grown in that area. That's the root of my 'naturalistic' comment.
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