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An increasingly popular subject in the reptile community is the bioactive setup. So today, I will be showing you how to put together a bioactive enclosure for a tropical setup in two slightly different ways, so that you have your choice when you're building one at home.
Both of our setups today will take place inside of twelve by twelve by 18 inch Exo Terra enclosures. They'll both be tropical, and they'll both be set up for Cuban False Chameleons that we've produced in the past. The main difference between them will be one will use primarily store-bought or pre-mixed substrate, and the other one will contain more of a DIY or our own mixture for substrate. And then we're going to in a future video compare how they both perform, so that we can figure out which one might work better for us, and maybe for you too.
We will be setting up these two enclosures for our Cuban False Chameleons that we produce the last couple of years. These are our holdbacks. Anyway, we have this big one right here. He was hatched at our place a year ago. We thought he was a female, which is the reason why we held him back, and we either miss-sexed him or we sold the wrong one. So Chad, if you're watching this, can you check your False Chameleon? It might be the girl we accidentally meant to keep. But if it is, that's fine. Don't worry about it, because the other one, the other habitat will be for is for this for sure a girl this time that we're also holding back. She's just this tiny little thing. She's just adorable.
And she's going to have one mention of a bioactive enclosure. By the end of this video, not only do bioactive setups provide more of like a natural look to your reptile's enclosure, but they also create a bit of their own ecosystem, so that they are somewhat self-sustaining. The macro organisms help clean up waste products, and that goes back into the soil, which helps the plants grow. And if this cycle just keeps going around, not to say you don't have to do any cleaning whatsoever, but it definitely helps reduce the amount of cleaning you have to do.
There are four or five different layers to a bioactive setup, depending on how you look at these layers. Your bottom-most layer is the drainage layer, and this is what it's kind of an environment for beneficial bacteria, and it helps aerate the soil above it and prevent it from becoming anaerobic or oxygen-lacking. The next level up is your substrate barrier, which literally just prevents the substrate above it from seeping through and mixing into the drainage layer. Above the substrate barrier is, of course, your substrate layer, and this is where a lot of you are microorganisms are going to be burrowing around, aerating the soil. They'll be breaking down detritus or rotting matter, which then breaks down and feeds the plants in that layer as well. So they kind of create that cycle mostly in that substrate layer. Above the substrate is your sphagnum moss, and above that would be your leaf litter. And both of those work together to help insulate the substrate below and therefore hold in humidity. It's in these sphagnum moss and leaf litter layer that you have isopods living as well. They don't burrow as much as the springtails do.
So when you set up a bioactive enclosure, you of course work from the bottom up. So let's put in our drainage layer. So we have our two Exo Terra enclosures here, and we kind of just want to test how our home concoction's going to work versus store-bought substrate layer. So that's why everything else is going to be the same between these two setups. But for our drainage layer, we're just going to use clay balls. And you can get these from several different reptile product manufacturers, like Zoo Med, The Bio Dude, Josh's Frogs. There's a few different options that you have. And if you want, you could instead use lava rock. And this is a very lightweight, porous rock, just like how these clay balls are lightweight and porous. Basically, you want something with a lot of surface area and the ability to soak in water, so that when the water starts to dry out, it can re-emit it back into the enclosure. It basically just hangs on to the water to keep the humidity levels more stable. And because of the amount of surface area that this porous substrate has, there's a lot of nooks and crannies for beneficial bacteria to cling on to and establish themselves. It's kind of similar to setting up a filter to a fish tank with your biological media, honestly. So you can use lava rocks if you want, they're a little more expensive, though. So if you have them, like we got these off Craigslist with a green tree python that we bought, so we just have these on hand. But from what we can tell, clay balls are what most people use, and they're a little cheaper.
Your drainage layer should be a couple inches deep to allow water to pool at the bottom without it touching the substrate above. And you want about a half an inch of water at the bottom of these when your bioactive setup is active. If it completely dries out, then the beneficial bacteria that's living down here will also die. So that's why you need some moisture, some water at the bottom of this drainage layer.
When Ed and I were discussing setting these up, we were thinking about it, and there's beneficial bacteria not only in bioactive reptile setups, but also in fish tank filters. So we've never read of people doing this, but we figured, I don't know why it wouldn't help this situation, because right now these brand new pristine enclosures have no beneficial bacteria at all. It just naturally will build on its own. Or like with fish tank filters, you can kick-start the bacteria colonies by squeezing out filtration media from an existing established tank filter. And there's a ton of bacteria not only on the sponge, but now in the water that I just squeezed out. So we're going to use this to kick-start the bacterial colonies in the bioactive setup. Bacteria is essential not only in bioactive setups, but also in like fish tanks, because it breaks down waste products like the ammonia that reptiles produce that falls to the substrate and seeps through in with the water to the bottom of these. The bacteria will break down the ammonia into nitrites, and then into nitrates, which get reabsorbed by the plants and actually act as the plants' food. Without the bacteria, the ammonia that's produced by the reptiles' waste, any decaying plant matter, maybe dead macro invertebrates, all collects, all that ammonia collects at the bottom of the enclosure, which can be detrimental to the overall health of the tank, since it usually takes a while for the bacteria to build. We figured we'd just again kick-start it by throwing in some beneficial bacteria from our fish tank. So if you know somebody who has a fish tank, you can do the same thing. Or you can go to a pet store and if you ask them to take their filtration media and just squeeze it into a bag that's full of good bacteria that you can use for your bioactive enclosure. Or you can buy a product called Stress Zyme. I've used that before, and that works quite well. To make sure to ask them nicely, yeah, in their position.
All right, the next layer is an easy one, I promise. On top of the drainage layer, you simply just have to put a substrate barrier to separate the drainage layer from the substrate that's gonna go on top of it. There's a lot of reptile stores that sell this that's cut to size for commonly used enclosure sizes. But you can also just get screen or mesh from like a local hardware store, which is what we did here, and then we just cut it to size. This we're just going to simply place on top of the drainage layer.
The next layer is your substrate layer, and this is what we're going to tweak a little bit between the two setups. So give me a second to explain how we're gonna set this up. The substrate layer is something that you can tweak and perfect on your own, and that's gonna be the biggest difference between these two setups. We're going to use one substrate layer that is pre-packaged and store-bought. In today's case, we're gonna use a mixture from Josh's Frogs. This is their ABG mix, or Atlanta Botanical Gardens mix, and it's been around for quite a while, which is why we wanted to use this one today. They're not a sponsor or anything, but it's a good tried-and-true substrate layer to use. This mixture contains tree fern, fir bark, charcoal, which is also known as carbon, sphagnum moss, and peat, aka peat moss. And it's the peat that we're actually going to try to eliminate in our concoction for a substrate layer, because it works very well. It's a great nutritious ingredient for the macro invertebrates running around in the substrate layer. However, there's debate on it being more of a finite resource and not very sustainably collected in from the wild. You see, peat is basically sphagnum moss that has died in a bog and it sinks to the bottom and collects, becomes very compacted, but provides very nutritious substrate to use in our bioactive enclosures. However, in order to collect peat moss, they have to excavate it by digging to the bottom of a bog and they pull it out, which essentially destroys the bog and the natural habitat of countless species of not only reptiles and amphibians, but other animals as well. It also takes a very long time for peat moss to re-accumulate at the bottom of a bog, which is why people are kind of saying that it's more of a finite resource, just because of how long it takes to reestablish itself. Peat moss isn't something that's just a concern in the reptile community, it's really a concern for all of horticulture, because peat moss is used in just about any soil that you find at stores.
For this video, we originally bought an organic soil thinking that it was peat moss free, and it turned out to have peat moss in it. We could not find any soils at the store that were peat moss free. So this is something that hopefully in the future, gardeners and horticulturists start avoid using because of how damaging to the environment peat moss really is. The good news is that there are easy alternatives to peat moss that you can use instead for your substrate layer. So that's what we're gonna test in this video is the two different types, peat moss included and peat moss free.
Our combination for a substrate layer will consist of blended coconut, which is also known as coir. I think it's pronounced, and that's gonna be our substitute for peat moss. It should do the same job as peat moss does without it being as damaging to the environment. It also contains sphagnum moss, carbon, aka charcoal, sand, tree fern, and crushed leaves. To get an idea of the consistency we're looking for, since we have never made this before, we're going to mix up the ABG mix just to get an idea of what the ratios of everything should be and what it kind of should look like. For this size of Exo Terra, the 12 by 12 by 18, you need approximately four quarts for your substrate layer, which is perfectly what this thing is. To the mixture, you have to add in some de-chlorinated water, enough so that when you squeeze it, it doesn't drip, but it holds its shape, kind of like perlite or vermiculite for incubating eggs, actually. And Ed insisted on using his Ed Roberts bogus.
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Doesn't drip. Yeah, here we go. Our base is going to be primarily compressed coconut and tree fern. This was the most expensive product to get, or most expensive ingredients, but you can usually, you can find it online, and you can often find it at reptile specialty stores too, in smaller quantities. We'll be adding in our activated charcoal or carbon, sphagnum moss, sand, and leaf litter. All of these ingredients are basically a food source for the macro invertebrates that are going to be running around in the substrate layer. I mean, they eat detritus, so they'll eat these leaves that break down, the sphagnum moss, the tree fern, just about all of these provide not only a place for them to burrow into, but it's also a source of food for them. The sand will help aerate the soil and prevent it from clumping together, which will therefore allow water to seep through easier. And the charcoal in here will provide another source of nutrients, but for the plants. Get a good deal there. It's pretty close now. Yeah, I'd say we're probably good. We have our substrate layer mixed up, and I think it's a pretty similar consistency to Josh's Frogs ABG mix, so I think we're pretty happy with how this turned out. The only other thing we wanted to add to it, which we couldn't find in time, was some compost. Compost would have provided another source of food, basically, for not only the macro organisms, but also the plants. We couldn't find any, so we'll just do without.
So now we're going to pour all of the contents from each bin into the Exo Terras. Okay, messy process, but there you go. Now is the point where you want to plant any live plants you want to add before you add the other stuff on top. So for sanity's sake, to keep everything the same in this kind of experiment we're doing, we're going to use an arrowhead plant in each one, along with a string of Pothos in each. There we go. I tried to plant them in a similar fashion to keep that the same too. But now I'm just going to add the climbing branches for the False Chameleons. And then just as one more source of food for the isopods and the springtails, we're going to put in here, we're just going to throw in some shed skin because they eat that too.
The next layer is going to be the sphagnum moss on top of your substrate layer here, and we're going to dip it into some water to hydrate it first.
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For making a huge mess doing this, don't expect to be clean if you're doing it. By the way, we swapped the enclosures just so it's ABG one is closer to me so I can easily reach it. But the sphagnum moss is used to help insulate and hold in all the moisture below, and therefore it won't dry out as quickly. It also gives a place for isopods to run around since they don't burrow into the substrate layer as much as the springtails do. And finally, the sphagnum moss layer also helps prevent the animal inside from ingesting too much soil.
The final layer is the leaf litter. See, now let's get the plant. Huh? Don't know. It's open. Oh my gosh. Thanks for the leaf layer, which is also going to add another layer of insulation to all the moisture below, and it also gives more shelter for the isopods. And I mean, they'll eat these as they decompose. We're just going to sprinkle these magnolia leaves over the top of the sphagnum moss. You can get these from again, many reptile product manufacturers. You could probably buy them in bulk from non-reptile companies too. These are from Pangea, but I know Josh's Frogs and The Bio Dude also carry these leaves. And this layer can be pretty thick because as they decompose, they'll just provide food and more insulation to what's underneath them. Tada! There we go. And now to help out the plants and just everything since it's all fluff still, we're just gonna add a little bit of water.
Now we get to add life to them. These are our springtails and our snails, baby snails, I mean. If they come with it, that's fine. You don't need a whole lot of this. And now we're gonna add isopods. We have all sorts of different kinds that we're gonna throw in these enclosures. Well, we added lights, and we have both the UVB light to these guys, as well as halogens, because well, we've been switching a lot of our basking bulbs from the traditional ones to halogens because they get hotter and they use a lot less electricity. So I'd suggest moving to those too. But we have them labeled. This is the ABG or Josh's Frogs pre-mixed substrate layer, and this one over here is the Snake Discovery Awesome Mix substrate. We're going to just see how they do, basically. We're going to give them a couple months, keep everything, you know, wet. You want to maintain about a half an inch of water at the bottom of your drainage layer here for things to keep alive and keep cycling through. And then we'll touch base in a couple months to let you know how each are doing. We're going to keep in mind that this point did start out taller than the other one. That's really the only difference between the two, though.
Let's add our little False Chameleons. We're going to put in this little female first. We'll see how she does. Oh, oh my gosh, she's just so cute. I'm just gonna go get comfy on her branch. Muv be. So let's put in the male from last year that we produced. He is kind of sassy, so he might kind of show off a bit when I pick him up. Sure for the camera. You're gonna be a doll. I'm not mean at all. I don't try to bite people when they pick me up. Course never, never. Why would you do that? Dude, you're gonna be nice on camera. Of course. Okay, well, we're gonna set him in here. There you go, buddy. Go get comfy on the branch. Find a happy spot. No, he's just gonna sit exactly where I put it. Okay.
Well, thank you guys for watching today's video on how to create a bioactive enclosure. If you decide to make one of your own based off of this video, let us know if you end up using a premade substrate layer or if you make your own. And if you do that, let us know if you tweaked the substrate layer at all. We're always looking for new ideas on how to improve habitats. And this is our first like truly bioactive enclosure setup video we've ever done, and we are new to bioactive enclosures ourselves, so we want to learn more. As always, thank you to our Patreon supporters for backing this channel. Love all of your support. You guys are amazing. Thank you. And thank you to everyone just watching today's video. I hope you learned something new, and hopefully this helps you put together your own bioactive setup someday. Thanks everybody for watching, and we'll see you next time.
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