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I heard that you can use potting soil as a substrate. Can you really? How would you do that? I have live plants in my setup and I would like to be able to plant them in the tank but I am not sure how I would go about cleaning the tank if I was to do this. I was told I had to change the substrate monthly.

you can do a bioactive potting soil bed at the bottom of your tank, about 3 inches deep. this is deep enough to plant small ficus or umbrella plants in. daily light mistings of the surface keep it from drying out, you want weekly waterings of the soil to, not to where its soggy, just damp, this will keep the plants alive too. the key is too once a week stir in all the poop on the surface layer down to the bottom layer. within 4-6 weeks you will have a fully active soil bed. i am doing this in all of my tanks.

phillipe de vosjoli said he has kept cresteds in tanks with this method for over 2 years with no substrate changing, and they still remain completely odorless except for a rich earthy smell.

he has a great page on how to do it in his book: Rhacodactylus The Complete Guid to their Selection and Care.

I highly recommend you get it, it is a great book all the way around and it goes into much greater detail on how to do the soil bed. I e-mailed him for a little extra information on it as well.

you can contact him @: www.giantgeckos.com

hope that helps!

Do you need live plants to make the potting soil bioactive?

Thanks
Daniel Martin
Kryptic Morphs

I was pretty excited to read this in his book. I'd also like to know if you need live plants for it to work? It didn't even occur to me to put the plant right in the mix - I was thinking about just leaving it in a pot. Would this work?

I'm also wondering if I could just use ESUs Jungle Mix Lizard Litter?

Any thought would be appreciated!
Thx
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i wouldnt use the jungle mix, for the simple reason that for the price you pay to get that, you can easily go to home depot/lowes and get a huge back of SuperSoil Original for like 5 bucks.

I used live plants in my setups, i planted them directly into the substrate. I e-mailed Vosjoli and asked him about it, and he said to plant them right in and they would do fine.

I am not totally sure if the live plants are necessary for a bio-active soil bed. I really don't think they would be, the main point of stirring the poop in is to develop bacteria that will help break it down almost like a compost heap.

You may have to e-mail him directly for an answer to that.

I use the supersoil method because i felt that the wood bark and the plant with the huge pot showing was too unnatural, it just didnt look good to me when i looked at my tanks, my natural setups look 100x better.

Great! Thanks for your help.

I think I agree about not using the pots because they seem like they might be an 'eyesore' and ruin the natural look.

Other than the price issue, do you think the Jungle mix would work? I ask because I already have some of that.

What kind of plants do you use?

I also kind of like his idea of adding an African Millipede to the setup - but I'm wondering if it will eat/disturb the plants if planted right in the substrate. I'll have to find out about that.

Do you have any pics of your setup? How long have you being doing the bioactive substrate thing?
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1.0 Mexican Black Kingsnake "Indigo"
1.0 Snow Corn snake "Chile"

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hey! no problem at all im glad i can help.

as far as jungle mix goes, im sure it would work, its no different than other potting soil really. The key thing is to NEVER use perlite, not sure if i spelled that right but its those little white beads you see in potting soil, they use it a lot when you buy potted plants.

I started the live soil bed about a week ago, and Phillipe told me in the e-mail it takes 4-6 weeks for it to become active.

in my setups I use Ficus Benjamina and Scheffelera, also known commonly as Umbrella Plant. I use these two because they have a very thick type growth form and the cresteds like to get between the branches and hide, its really cool looking. Here is a pic of one of my setups:
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first pic doesnt work, lets see if this does:

.
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1.0 Mexican Black Kingsnake "Indigo"
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"Kira"

You guys have gotten me very interested in giving this a try. One of my biggest hassles in my husbandry is my cresty tank, mainly because it is a pain to take all the stuff out and clean everything. Anyway, I have a couple detailed questions, trying to think ahead. When you say stir the soil, do you have to remove the plants and stir 100% of the soil, or do you just kinda stir it around the patches of visible ground? Also, when they poop on the plants, I guess you just knock it off and stir it in the ground? Do those plants you list require high UV? This all sounds great, and I wanna give it a try, just wanna get some ideas of what to expect.
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my plants have 30w fluorescent tubes over them, and they get some indirect sunlight through the window, and they do just fine, just as green and healthy as the day I bought them.

I don't really notice too much poop on the plants, but when I mist I may knock a lot of it down to the soil. I dont remove everything to stir. I simply stir around it for the most part. You don't have to do a huge stir, just enough to move all the surface soil with poop down to the lower soil. They key is to not let it dry out, daily light mistings of the surface soil as well as weekly watering of the plants and soil help keep it perfect. you dont want it soggy, just moist.