Thoughts on Bioactive enclosures for reptiles/snakes?

[Coluber42]

I recently converted my ball python's cage to bioactive. The big impetus for me to do it was that we had a really hot summer and I have no A/C; so using deeper soil with burrows dug into it gives my snake places to retreat to that stay at least somewhat cooler than before.

It hasn't been established for long enough for me to feel like I can give a complete report on its success, but so far I'm pleased. I didn't have a spare vivarium to let everything grow in for months before putting the snake in; I just rearranged his tank and then put him back into it. So it will definitely be awhile before the CUC (cleanup crew) has multiplied to where it can handle snake poop and shed skin, and I expect to still be spot cleaning for a good while. But other people who have bio setups for ball pythons say that once they're well established the CUC really can take care of that stuff, as long as you feed the CUC in between poops since ball pythons don't poop often enough to keep them fed.

Some of the plants had been in there before in containers, and I grew the others in pots to get them well established before subjecting them to nightly trampling. I have spider plant, pothos, wandering jew, and peace lilies in there. The wandering jew has definitely gotten snaked on and pieces broken off, but other parts of it are growing well and it bounces back pretty well. Pothos is basically the universal un-killable house and vivarium plant. The spider plant has lots of broken-over leaves, but it also bounces back and grows new leaves and seems happy. I'd like to get some other kind of low creeping ground cover type thing at some point too.

I've put in springtails and several kinds of isopods; we'll see which isopods eventually breed. That will take awhile though, so we'll see how it goes. I do kinda get a kick out of the variety of different colorful cool isopods you can get, though!

Since I did the conversion, the humidity has been staying pretty steadily high even though the surface is dry, although the real test will be how it does in the winter. I expect it to keep the humidity stable more easily though. The other thing that remains to be seen is heat, as my house gets pretty cold. I had been using a UTH on the cool side to keep the temperature from dropping too far, but that won't do much now. I have a RHP as a main heat source. I've added a small fan inside the enclosure to help circulate the air over to the cool side and keep it warmer over there, which seems to be working although again it hasn't really gotten cold yet.

My snake took the conversion pretty well; I put most of his same furnishings back in most of the same places to help him adjust. He's been in and out of his new burrows and after a few days of upheaval he went back to his old habits.

I did put a thin drainage layer in mine, although some people don't. The drainage layer is basically insurance against over-watering. I have fluorescent UVB lights which provide enough light for the plants, although at some point I do want to add supplementary light for the plants that are in the shade of the larger platform.