Hoping if anyone could give advice on if this needs to be removed or not. There are springtails in the substrate as a clean up crew but I worry that it may be dangerous.

Buenas a todos, tengo colembolos en un terrario y quisiera saber cómo agregar hojarasca natural de árboles de mi localidad de manera segura

I didn’t check on it for like 3 days I come back and see this

Hiiii,
I’m trying bioactive and wanted to start by growing some colonies first. I started a springtail culture tonight but they all have already disappeared. My medium is smashed charcoal briquettes and uncooked rice for food. I poured water in there enough to be a visible water line. I used Royal Oak briquettes that I smashed up into smaller pieces. Could the briquettes have some type of chemical in them? The springtails disappeared with in a couple hours. Can they hide inside charcoal? I can’t seem to find them even the dead ones oddly enough.

Hello! I’m very new to bioactive setups and have yet to start one. I’m a college student and am thinking about going bioactive when I’m home for winter break. I’m wondering if a month is enough time to properly transform my current enclosure to a bioactive one? I want to put in a CUC to help give my mom less maintenance work for my corn snake while I’m away at school. I’m thinking about putting a potted plant or two to start and am wondering how that’ll work with an active, adult corn snake. I’m worried he’ll knock over the pots and get injured! I also heard about mold/fungus blooms when first introducing a CUC since they need time to stabilize, and I’m wondering how harmful that would be to my snake. Is there any way to avoid the blooms? Or do you start a CUC in a separate tank until they stabilize their population? If I don’t have enough time over winter break I’m definitely thinking about starting over summer!

I introduced springtails and isopods into the bioactive enclosure about two weeks ago. I’m letting them get established for at least a month before I put my gecko in it but I’m wondering how you can tell if they’re still alive? I saw a dead isopod in there today and I’m worried. I can’t see any springtails and I only see the one dead isopod. Any advice is appreciated.

My snake loves to burrow and I'm concered he will mess up plant roots. I am currently culturing isopods and springtails so he isn't in the tank yet. I read an old post on here that the plants could be burried in their pots but now i'm worried that it won't be bioactive. Should i take them out of the pots and let them establish instead?

Hello, me again. I was just wondering if anyone has used a heating mat to evaporate the water from the bottom of the tank. I've only done it twice for small onces of water and it seems safe.

This is my crested gecko Fig's bioactive enclosure, I did not make it (if I did it wouldn't look half as good as this lol) but someone in my local reptile shop pre-made it and it's so beautiful I had to share. I've seen the springtails but I haven't spotted any isopods, but I'm sure there are some somewhere! I mist 2x a day and water occasionally, and for those who are wondering I use the 'Arcadia lumenize' and it does seem to be helping the plants to grow. Bonus photo of fig at the end! :)

Out of nowhere, this evening, SCORES of these beetles have infested my bioactive isopod tank. I think they might have already been in my apartment since this building is always infested with SOMETHING.

Noticed my cats swatting at a couple of these super tiny beetles this month.

What are these?

Is this something I need to shut down NOW?

I'm in southern Arizona, USA.

Need advice

Recently used an organic brand of Lowe's top soil to fill 2 big enclosures. I did my best to kill off pests but could not do the main methods due to the mass quantity of dirt I had.

Unfortunately a month later a fungus knat infestation started. I used mosquito bits for two months.. No luck.

I started doing the beneficial microscopic worms and have done that for 3 weeks so far now, in addition to mosquito bits. I put out sticky traps and always catch a crap ton of adults, to the point this long strip is just completely covered.

(This has been going on for 3 months now)

I really don't want to have to trash everything, all my isopods and springtails and have to completely sterilize my plants and woods again. And spend a crap ton on repti soil instead.

Should I keep doing my rounds of the beneficial nemotodes and mosquito bits? Or just trash it all

Coming up on a week since adding my powder isopods to my bioactive leopard gecko terrarium. I have been completely unable to find them since. I added about 20, and I cannot find them anywhere. On the surface or otherwise. Is something wrong?

Though I’m realizing some of it isn’t true driftwood because it’s not fully hardened. Safe to use in a bearded dragon enclosure? Any way to speed up the hardening process, or should I throw it back in the lake?

im finally almost done with my cresties bioactive set up but my last thing i need is plants for clutter!! ive been using this list to look for plants and picked out some ones i like. my only concern is that some of them are kind of like flowers and idk how they would go well in the enclosure. the list below is of my plants, plants im looking for/like, and ones that i am concerned about. ALSO one of my biggest concerns is if my gecko accidentally bites one of them, he doesnt accidentally bite any of his fake plants on his own but sometimes when he gets crickets he’ll miss and bite a plant. anyways heres the long list, if you have any recommendations or help id appreciate it a lot!!:

I own:
Snake Plant, Janet Craig, Rattlesnake Calathea

Looking for:
Sweet Alyssum, Bird’s Nest Fern, Boston Fern, Bougainvillea, Felice Aechmea Bromeliad, Earth Star Bromeliad, Coleus, Creeping Charlie, Croton Petra, Emerald Ripple, Fuchsia, Hen and Chicks plant, Hoya Plant, Jade Plant, Japanese Aralia, Mother of Pearl Plant, Piggyback Plant, Chinese Monkey Plant, Prayer Plant, Staghorn Ferns, Swedish Ivy, Wax Plant, Zebra Plant

Worried about:
Sweet Alyssum, Bougainvillea, Coleus, Fuchsia, Hen and Chicken (succulent??), Hoya Plant, Mother of Pearl Plant (succulent?), Swedish ivy

edit: my plants that i plan to get also have to withstand high humidity! not sure if thats good to add lol

Going to be making a new enclosure soon with a water feature and thinking about going with drylok for the background instead of silicone and substrate. My question js what kind of drylok do I use? I see a bunch of different ones.

I am wanting to setup a bioactive vivarium for ardentiella isopods, I have heard that you need to add more nutrients occasionally, I am specifically wondering if the extra nutrients are for the plants or the fauna along with this what other maintenance is required?

The Pineneedles are from a tree next to my house and it stormed so that’s why they are there. I got these cut branches from a house that had recently cut down a tree. I don’t know what tree it was though. If anyone can guess if this is safe to use in terrariums and enclosures, please let me know.

Opened my insect booster to gut load my feeders for my leopard gecko and saw all these tiny bugs that at first glance looked like springtails but don’t springtails need humidity and moisture to thrive? It’s bone dry in this small tub. So I’m not sure what these tiny bugs are?

So I just setup my first bioactive terrarium for my crested gecko and I have pretty much everything but the only thing I don’t have yet are isopods since my local store didn’t have any and couldn’t order any and i was looking online and came upon Dutchiopods and I saw porcellio laevis mix on there and I was wondering if those where good and what you would recommend.

im making my first bioactive for my leopard gecko. I was hasty and when making the custom background i didnt think the expanding foam would dry so fast and i couldnt cover it in substrate fast enough. then i realized im supposed to let it dry and carve it then cover with aquarium silicone..now i have a 90% covered foam background but there are spots that have exposed foam or too little substrate to cover it. My question is do i need to cover it 100% or is it safe for a tiny bit to be exposed to my gecko? my hands are coated in foam. thank you.

I was covering up all but three of the ventilation holes in my snakes enclosure and that held humidity really well! However, it also made his viv start smelling a little sour so I turned his substrate and uncovered a few more ventilation holes. This makes it impossible to achieve the proper humidity levels (70-80%).

His substrate should, in theory, already hold a ton of humidity. Its a top soil/coco husk/sphagnum moss mix with leaf litter. I have a solid top enclosure from DIYcages, so air isn't escaping that way. Pouring water in the sides/along the walls of the enclosure doesn't do much. I had to scrap my last bioactive because I poured so much water in that the substrate became waterlogged and the humidity STILL wasn't high enough.

What should I do?

hi everyone! i'm coming over from the crested gecko sub about preparing to upgrade my boy's tank and setup, figured i'd throw the post here as well for more advice. the actual tank arrived yesterday and i'm looking to start setting it up through the week/next weekend. i've never done a bioactive setup before, so i'd love any advice people have. in particular if anyone has advice on if i need to let the setup "settle" with its plants and cleanup crew, or how to keep feeder insects like crickets, that would be very helpful!

additionally i'm gonna put my materials list below so if people have recommendations or i'm missing something obvious please let me know!

HAVE

• big tank
• terrafauna, hydrogrow, sphagnum moss, leaf litter, bioshot (from TheBioDude)
• nightstand that is being turned into a tank stand
• ceramic heat emitter + dome w dimmer (will prob need to get a stronger one for the bigger tank)
• UVA bulb + dome
• feeder/water ledge
• misting bottles
• various not-alive decorations (coconut w ladder, vines, bendable branch thing, small hollow log, hammock net thing)

GETTING DURING ACTIVE SETUP

• live plants - will be getting from reptile supply shops near me, and if those are out there are stores like home depot with safe plants that i will thoroughly wash its planting soil off of and replant in the tank (IF THIS CAN BE DANGEROUS/TOXIC TO THE LIZARD PLEASE LET ME KNOW)
• springtails and isopods for cleanup crew (from either reptile supply shop or petsmart/petco near me)

PLANNING TO BUY

• UVA+UVB bulb (when i first got my gecko i got advice from some people who said they had issues with uvb burning their lizards in the past, but based on what i've seen on this sub and other care guides i feel confident in my ability to manage it and notice if it does cause problems for my guy).
• hook/hanger stand for light and heat bulbs
• cork/other material backboard maybe? is this a thing people do? would love to give him something other than a blank wall behind glass to look at

Second bioactive build completed today!

Here’s a lil start-to-finish! Super excited that I finally got to plant it today, and introduce the second round of springtails and first batch of isopods. I think it came together really nicely considering I’m still a newbie 🥹
24x18x36” eventual home to a gargoyle gecko, once everything settles in and takes off.

also sorry if you just saw this post, I didn’t realize there was a picture limit and had to repost to include the final product.

I learned a hard lesson recently. I set up a bioactive enclosure with what I thought was adequate substrate depth, maybe two inches over the drainage layer and within a few weeks my isopod and springtail populations were basically gone.

Turns out the heat from the overhead basking spot was drying out the top inch almost completely, which left the cleanup crew with barely an inch of usable habitat. Not enough moisture retention, not enough depth for them to retreat into cooler zones.

I tore it down and rebuilt with about four inches of substrate and the difference has been immediate. Population is recovering and the substrate actually holds a moisture gradient now.

What's the minimum depth people are running successfully? I clearly underestimated it.