Bioactive setup questions

[Cricket1234]

So I was pretty ticked off, as my Pueblan Milk had another incomplete shed. This is after offering 2 humid hides additional to his normal hides and putting in a huge water bowl in when he is going into shed, but my attempts were always unsuccessful. So after the last shed I got some ecoearth. This is awesome! It was completely dry but my humidity raised to like 50! Now I heard also that you can do a bioactive setup with this substrate, and I think that would be awesome to do. I have a few questions for you guys though.

Do you need live plants? Or can I just have a clean up crew? My snake is tiny and probably would uproot or wedge himself under the roots of a plant and make it impossible for me to reach him.

Are there other animals than springtails an isopods you can use? I am definetely going to add them as my first choice, just wondering if I could add add stuff.

Does the clean up crew need specific care requirements? Like humidity, temp, etc. that might not go well with my snake's care requirements? (Pueblan Milk Snake) Will they survive on my small snakes excrement and like leaves and stuff or will I need to add food?

How do I convince people the bugs won't escape and infest the house?

Thank you guys so much! I haven't been active on the forum for a while but I will try to post more!

[dannybgoode]

The bugs you mention should be fine with the temps etc that your providing for your snake. They do need a source of food though to keep them going inbetween presents from the snake! Bit of rotting fruit and veg, some leaf litter that kind of thing.

You don't have to provide plants but they look nice and even my bigger snakes haven't trashed them yet. Plants also help with humidity. I have at least some in all my setups although I do mix live with fake on occasions.

As for stuff escaping. Hasn't happened to me yet! They seem pretty well contained in the Viv.

[akane]

They don't need plants and I'm not sure if you can plant straight in eco earth. Some of those commercial substrates are too acidic by themselves or not broken down enough into soil with the necessary variety of nutrients versus being more simply shredded plant matter like the coco fiber. Drop a chunk of wood in there, some bark, an area of cork, etc.... and wet that area specifically a bit extra. They'll live there and spread out across the tank. Slight dampness in the rest of the soil aids the smaller burrowers but if you've reached your ideal humidity with it dry the isopods don't care as much as long as they have somewhere to return to and overall humidity is high enough for them. You can run a tank on just isopods and springtails. Rotting plant matter and actually a bit of mold mostly feeds them so damp leaf litter works great and if you don't want to collect wild in the fall or drying off trees you can actually buy small amounts of sterile leaf litter online. The damp wood will rot and mold where your snake doesn't contact it against the damp substrate under it and feed them too while your snake can stay dry in the rest of the enclosure. You can add some vegetables and some proteins like a piece of grain free dog or cat kibble. Avoid grains because they can grow harmless but annoying soil/grain mites. There are commercial insect foods but most have grains so the only one I've heard of being popular for bioactive cultures instead of feeder insect cultures in the US is repashy brand.

You don't have to do any of the extra though. They often do fine on basic moist plant matter with a hiding place, they'll eat snake sheds if you leave them in, and then clean up the occasional waste. Some people just like to bulk up their cleanup crew so much some say they can leave a whole large rat in the cage uneaten by the snake and it will be stripped to bones before it rots. They are probably also using beetles. You can just dump in mealworms but they are a little more food demanding and don't survive as well on just leaf litter and wood. However, they can survive completely dry conditions like desert tanks with just some slices of root vegetables for moisture and a little supplemental food for snakes that don't leave waste much. They are often raised in dry grain medium only with potato or similar for moisture. Those are the basic critters. Isopods come in lots of color varieties if you want and there are a couple species of springtails but not real important if you aren't going to temp extremes.

[TRD]

If you want to run the bio-active on the long run, you do need plants to dispose of all the nutrients that are created by your cleanup crew. If you don't, then other less invited species will eventually come into the vivarium to eat that stuff up (fungi, algae, ...)

[akane]

I was planning hardy bamboo grass or succulents based on humidity just cause I want to but my first setup biaoctive still doesn't have anything and most I know don't run plants even long term. I've never seen it come up beyond a want. Some choose plants and maybe it's a logical step if you run one for years to want to plant but it's never been mentioned as a requirement. Some do get mushrooms even in new tanks depending on substrate. They don't find it a concern. I haven't seen it in mine. Everyone just says pull them if necessary or if they are harmless let them run their course and they will feed some of the cleanup crew. Some people even eat varieties they can ID as human edible lol Where is algae going to grow? That's aquatic so you have to get very wet. Moss or green molds? Small fungi and mold are eaten by springtails and isopods but many do use a more complete group of species by collecting wild items including purposefully the dirtiest leaf litter they can find or wild soils in enough amount to inoculate a tank with a variety of things beyond sterile cultures.

[dannybgoode]

I guess it's depends on how strictly you want to define bioactive.

For a viv to be a truly self sufficient ecosystem it needs plants by definition because as TRD points out it is the plants that use the nutrients created by the the waste of the cuc thus a true full cycle.

That said these days a lot of people are of the view that just the cuc are sufficient for a viv to be classed bio and that's fine.

One thing I would note is that you don't need to go bio to have a really nice naturalistic set up and I've seen some people keep species inappropriately in a push to make the viv bio. My olives for example are not going to be bio at the moment as their environment doesnt lend itself (although i am still researching).

I'd take a really nice naturalistic viv over a bio viv any day but of course if it works to have both then so much the better.

[akane]

I have some inbetweens that don't even fall under bio yet. I actually have just been throwing mealworms in 2 of my tanks, letting them scour it from larvae to beetles, and slowly die out until I do it again. That's for one of my desert tanks with no added sand/soil mix water that all waste dries to nothing anyway and my blood python that poops twice since Jan. I am going full bio with the python eventually but their nervous tendency as babies has made it pointless to push him there yet. I'm giving him the very stable 40gallon breeder setup when I upgrade the bullsnake out of it to a 5' enclosure because he started more the 18" of one end last fall and now wraps multiple panels when along the glass lol

[Cricket1234]

Alot of the research I have been doing say they need it very moist. What humidity is best for them, and if I provide one moist section will they stay there or venture out and do their job? Ty guys!

[Cricket1234]

Also as a side note I hear that you can use millipedes. Is this true, and if so, is it a good idea?

[dannybgoode]

Originally Posted by Cricket1234

Also as a side note I hear that you can use millipedes. Is this true, and if so, is it a good idea?

Millipedes are great yes. Some people even use the 'display' 'pedes (the giant ones and the colourful ones) thus having more than one interesting creature in the viv.

[akane]

You can buy both large and various burrowing milipedes. I get some when using my native topsoil and I never see them except along the glass in the soil. They are very expensive from companies though so the small ones or in a big enclosure they are limited in their use for cleanup. I am looking at feather milipedes just cause they are interesting but they mostly just eat mold and rotting wood so they aren't really much of a cleanup crew. Harmless, small, reproduce, interesting, and hey they'll clean up some mold if it does happen so why not. They are like $6 each on websites though but I found someone selling them $2 each and $6 priority shipping on classifieds so I started setting up a culture container. There are also a few centipedes since your snake doesn't eat them. Some can be poisonous. Little bumblebee are popular but again a lot of money for very little centipede compared to buying a big display specimen.

[TRD]

Originally Posted by Cricket1234

Alot of the research I have been doing say they need it very moist. What humidity is best for them, and if I provide one moist section will they stay there or venture out and do their job? Ty guys!

Depends which species of CUC you have. I have a bioactive, arid, Kingsnake viv which is self sustaining. And I do it with springtails and pillbugs, but temperate species. They do just fine with dry, and my springtails are inhabiting the driest areas they can possibly find and thriving on them. Literally the only things that remains from the piles of poop, are the hairs if there are any.

Of course you do need water for sustaining the population, and the trick here is to have levels and not a flat surface so that there's a gradient from dry to damp. Upper levels will be dryer than lower. You'll notice the snake will utilize even the moist areas quite often, though generally people believe that a kingsnake will be fine with an environment "as dry as possible". In my experience they do perfectly fine with micro climates where humidity can reach >80%, and seemingly seek out those spots as well, as long as it's localized and they have options to move to different climates.

Ventilation is also very important so that you can actually provide enough water for your plant species to thrive, without letting the soil too damp over the entire space of the enclosure. Proving some ventilation for 30-60 minutes a day by use of a ventilator (I use a USB laptop one) will dry out the top layer of soil well enough on the dampest spots to avoid any issues, at least for me.