Baking day!!!

Maggie3fan

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Springtails are delightful! People pay a lot of good money to have them sent in the mail for their vivs.

Springtails: tiny terrestrial crustaceans that ride in with your purchased substrate.

They are quite beneficial, eating detritus, mold, and the like. Their excretion is slightly alkaline, preventing substrate from becoming too acidic for reptile skin/shells.

A fresh batch gets crazy-overpopulated until its reproduction gets calibrated by the amount of food they can find in your enclosure. Calibration can take a few weeks. Buying new substrate will start the cycle all over again (fresh eggs riding in with new bio matter, or they will get in from a population already living in your house). Substrate without them can become too acidic and sour, needing to be replaced entirely. Rinse, repeat.

You can get rid of a number of them overnight by putting a few shallow water plates in the habitat when you turn out the lights. They prefer to be more active at night, but for some reason springtails cannot tell they are hopping onto water in the dark and they will drown.

Otherwise they are non-harmful, and as the top layer of your substrate dries somewhat, they will naturally move down and stay predominantly in the damper layers at the bottom of the habitat.
Perfect! Thanks so much...
 

Maggie3fan

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i'm so confused, i joined the forum in may, i've had my tort since april and everything EVERYTHING i've done so far is from the advice of members on here INCLUDING baking the substrate, these tiny little "springtails" were crawling on the OUTSIDE of my vivarium, if they are not such a problem as you say, and if the numbers will decline in time then maybe this is a lesson learned, i'm STILL learning and just trying to do what is best for my tort, thankyou al for your advice.
I'm sorry...I hope I didn't confuse you...mostly I just try to be funny, but I really don't see any need to bake dirt...lol
 

wellington

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Guess I've been lucky, I don't get gnats. Maybe I could send you a container of Springtails...I have then in each tort table...
Thanks but all my torts are outside in a shed now, so I don't get bothered by the bugs any more.
When I had them in my house, which was a 3 flat we owned and rented two apartments out, I really didn't need bugs in the house.
Was bad enough I had a cricket infestation once that got down to the other apartments, oops lol.
 

Mrs.Jennifer

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i'm so confused, i joined the forum in may, i've had my tort since april and everything EVERYTHING i've done so far is from the advice of members on here INCLUDING baking the substrate, these tiny little "springtails" were crawling on the OUTSIDE of my vivarium, if they are not such a problem as you say, and if the numbers will decline in time then maybe this is a lesson learned, i'm STILL learning and just trying to do what is best for my tort, thankyou al for your advice.
I hear ya! It all comes down to an individual’s experience and tolerance. When I switched over to the proper substrate (yes, I followed “reliable” advice and had ground walnut hulls…??‍♀️), I had springtails and phorid flies. I was told the populations would balance out, and they did. It took a week or so of phorid flies flying around my computer monitor, but I grew up on a farm and have a long term view of things with waiting for nature to take its course. Also, every morning I dump any drowned springtails from the terra cotta water dish and refresh. It really is personal taste/tolerance. No judgement!
 

Karen(pebbles)

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I'm sorry...I hope I didn't confuse you...mostly I just try to be funny, but I really don't see any need to bake dirt...lol
Oh Maggie, I've been confused since day dot lol, but thankyou, I come on the forum everyday religiously and take on board all the advice I can to do the right thing for my little tort, my husband evens jokes that I look after him better than I did the kid's when they were little ?? ( I think he's right).
 

Maggie3fan

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Oh Maggie, I've been confused since day dot lol, but thankyou, I come on the forum everyday religiously and take on board all the advice I can to do the right thing for my little tort, my husband evens jokes that I look after him better than I did the kid's when they were little ?? ( I think he's right).
Reality says you can't make everything right for him, just do the best you can...
 

Karen(pebbles)

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How do I tell the difference between the knats and spring tails?
I think the knats they refer to are the phorid flies, I might be wrong, but the springtails are so minute I only spotted them in the empty food dish the morning I went to feed my tort
 

Karen(pebbles)

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So here’s an update, never will I ever bake the substrate again!!! 24 hrs later I’m still trying to rid the smell from my oven, think I’ll put up with the springtails in future!
 

ZenHerper

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How do I tell the difference between the knats and spring tails?
Fungus gnats are wee flying insects...they look like miniature mosquitos. They dart around on the ground, but when you go to poke at them, they fly off. Springtails don't fly - they *sproing!* when disturbed by deploying an itsy lever under the abdomen.



Phorid flies are likewise tiny, but have a more Fly-like appearance:
 

Cathie G

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I think the knats they refer to are the phorid flies, I might be wrong, but the springtails are so minute I only spotted them in the empty food dish the morning I went to feed my tort
Maybe I have springtails after all. They are so little I just never considered them a nuisance. The only place I see them is on Sapphire's food tile.?
 

Maggie3fan

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So here’s an update, never will I ever bake the substrate again!!! 24 hrs later I’m still trying to rid the smell from my oven, think I’ll put up with the springtails in future!
You'll forgive me for laughing!!! LOLOLOLOLHAHAHAHAHEEEHEEE oh ahem...excuse my breach of decorum...
 
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