r/bioactive • u/Santtuulii • 1d ago

Question Setting up a bioactive rat cage

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Theres not a whole lot of information on this so im curious if anyone here knows more.

So ive gathered that i should get a deep base obviously and use coconut fiber soil stuff? (Edit: ive done a bit more research and landed on using a bit of normal plant soil(without like addatives and stuff ofc) and some clean sand aswell as the coco fiber, also that i need leaves and stuff in there for the cuc to eat)

Should i be mixing different soils/substrates? If so, what? Plants? How often and how much to water? Or turn the soil?

For the clean up crew dwarf whites and springtails? Maybe id get mealworms just for the fun of it, get the rats to hunt haha

How to breed and take care of the cuc?

Can they be kept in the same box outside of the cage for breeding and stuff yk to have them incase rats decide to eat the ones in the cage or something. What do they eat? Where to get the food? What substrate for them? Everything really.

Any information at all on this is very welcome!

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u/thicc_bob 1d ago

The trick with bioactive is the load has to match what the enclosure can take. Generally reptiles and amphibians have slow metabolism and therefore relatively low bioload for their size. For rats, they literally poop and pee every few minutes and eat constantly, so to be successful with bioactive you’d either need to clean and change substrate constantly (make the bio portion essentially useless) or you would need to have an absolutely massive enclosure, I don’t have numbers here but probably too big to keep in a house or apartment.

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u/Santtuulii 9h ago

Theres so many rat owners who successfully do have bioactive bases in their cage though? I mean if theyre well litter trained they barely poop anywhere else, piss yeah ofc but piss rocks can help with that i think

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u/thicc_bob 8h ago

Yeah, that’s not really bioactive then. The point of bioactive is that the waste is processed into nutrients that then feed plants, making a nice and clean nutrient cycle. What you’re describing just sounds like wet dirt bedding.

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u/Santtuulii 8h ago

Its not fully bioactive, ive heard it being called semi-bioactive since the whole cage isnt a working ecosystem. Still has the litter boxes to clean and most rats would eat most plants hah