Can I put a clean up crew in normal substrate without bioactive?

[Starscream]

There's not really a point to putting in a clean-up crew if you're not going bioactive, as eventually you will have to dump the substrate with the CUC in it to clean. Also, you still need to clean things even with a clean-up crew, as they're not going to get everything. In fact, with the lower frequency in waste production and the size of it, they're not really going to do much waste-wise on cleaning up after a ball python. It's mostly so you don't have to do full substrate changes and instead change it out small increments as a time, as even bioactives will need new soil mixed in eventually as you clean up after your snake.

The benefits of bioactive are there is, overall, less cleaning to do, as you're usually spot cleaning instead of deep cleaning, and you can see natural behaviors like digging with the deeper substrate levels bioactive requires, and the ability to keep plants in with your snake,, as well as a few more I'm definitely forgetting. However, bioactives can fail, and require a few months lead time of setup so the CUC can get established before the snake can be added; this means feeding them in the meantime up until adding the snake so they can hopefully try to keep up with what your snake produces. It is definitely not for everyone, and having a backup in case the system does fail is essential.

I personally love bioactive setups, but yeah. They are work to maintain. Plants fail, and you have to pull them out. Sometimes the system collapses without any specific reason and you have to start over. Keeping on top of it helps to mitigate that, but it's not a leave it and you're done kind of deal.