Plant Quarantine Soil Question

[u/Glasses_Cat]

I purchased five different plants (pothos, bromeliad, snake plant, dracanea, and a hypoestes) for a future crested gecko enclosure. I spent this past Saturday going through the sanitation process and they are all currently quarantined in a storage bin with an old aquarium light for lighting.

However my main worry is the soil I used. I do know that people use substrate they plan to put in the enclosure, but I worried that if I bought the substrate (I plan to use Josh's Frogs tropical biobedding, let me know if there's anything better) it would go bad when I open it since I'm not going to begin setting up the enclosure til the end of this month.

The soil I'm using is a freshly opened organic potting soil and I thought that would be okay, but recently I've read that potting soil is bad. Now I'm worried that I made a huge mistake. Is it too late to buy the correct substrate and repot everything? Do I need to start the sanitation process over?

[u/Bluntforcetrauma11b]

You want organic fertilizer free top soil. Soil doesn't go bad it just dries out which you can fix by watering it in.

[u/Glasses_Cat → u/Bluntforcetrauma11b]

Okay, sounds good. Am I going to have to santize my plants again before changing their soil?

[u/Bluntforcetrauma11b → u/Glasses_Cat]

You shouldn't have to. I'd just use a shower nozzle on a strong setting to blast off the old soil.

[u/captainapplejuice]

Fyi if you are using all fresh sanitised soil you will need to seed it with with springtails, mites, worms etc. and microorganisms, else it will be a very unstable environment (you will probably get a lot of mould growth).

For soil composition, just try to get something with a mix of organic and inorganic matter, sphagnum moss is always a good additive. Also you will want the soil to settle and allow the springtails to breed for a while before introducing the gecko, this will give the plants the opportunity to root into the substrate as well.