Quick Bioactive Question

[Neal]

Okay, I've run bioactive for years and I'll address some of the misconceptions here.

Reptile mites will not thrive in an enclosure without a snake, so if for some reason you do get reptile mites, simply move the snake over to a different enclosure and treat, get rid of the mites, then put the snake back in. You're not going to introduce reptile mites by collecting stuff from the woods. However, I still advise a bit of caution because of pesticides and what not.

I get oak leaves from my yard, but I still rinse/soak them to make sure they're clean, then I bake them. I do this because I originally ordered all my microfauna online and have cultures. I breed my own springtails & isopods. If you did have to take your snake out because of mites, you can just make sure the microfauna in the enclosure have stuff to eat. I'm not going to get into too much detail with this though.

Anyways, I run 3-3.5 inches of substrate in my bioactive tanks, I use a mixture of 100% organic garden soil(Lowes), majestic earth 100% organic spaghnum peat moss(Lowes) and quikrete play sand(Lowes). Now with maintaining humidity you don't want to keep the soil soggy, however spraying it will not reach the bottom layers unless you water it and then you can run into more issues. So spraying is fine. However when I'm filling the water bowl in the enclosures, I over fill it and let it run into the bottom of the enclosure. When I used exo-terra tanks I put a layer of rocks in the bottom and this way I let standing water sit on the rock layer as this helps the best with humidity. With my PVC enclosures I don't do this because I can't see the bottom layer. Now this isn't the best way to setup if you're wanting to run live plants. If you want do to that then you need a bit thicker layer, and you can put the clay balls or growstones on the bottom, with that black garden stuff over them, then you can do your substrate.

The snake fecal matter is broken down before I even notice it, so whoever said waiting for poop to be broken down obviously has 0 experience with bioactive. The reason you run isopods & springtails is because each have their own way of cleaning.

Springtails eat rotting, organic matter, decaying matter, mold.

Isopods don't eat mold, they eat rotting/decaying stuff as well. They are more or less your terrestrial bugs.

I mix oak leaves into the substrate as well and even put some on top, so everything has food they can eat.