Indoor enclosure that dont need cleaning. is it possible ?

Chip0282

Member
Joined
Dec 2, 2020
Messages
37
Location (City and/or State)
Semarang
Hi all, is it possible to have indoor enclosure that dont need cleaning ? i heard of bioactive enclosure, is that proper for tortoise ? or if it can be achieved, what the requirements ?

Thanks
 

KarenSoCal

Well-Known Member
Tortoise Club
5 Year Member
Platinum Tortoise Club
Joined
Jul 8, 2017
Messages
5,750
Location (City and/or State)
Low desert 50 mi SE of Palm Springs CA
First, watch and pay attention to when your tortoise usually poops. Then start doing his soaks every day near to that time. Hopefully he will poop in the soak each day. That will help keep the enclosure clean.

Then you need some bugs. Here in the USA we call them springtails, and pill bugs or roly polys. I don't know the scientific name for the 2 species, but somebody will chime in to help you with that.

Anyway, once you get a colony of each bug, they eat poop, urine residue, and leftover bits of food in the substrate.

What kind of substrate do you use? The bugs like warm and humid conditions, so you need a substrate that you can wet down and it holds water. Orchid bark works really well.
 
  • Like
Reactions: myk

BrookeB

Well-Known Member
10 Year Member!
Joined
Mar 3, 2012
Messages
424
Location (City and/or State)
Bodfish
I have springtails in my leopard hatchling enclosure and honestly I don’t clean up any poop or anything. I plant the grass seed and the poop just gets reused as fertilizer.. so ??‍♀️
 

Blackdog1714

Well-Known Member
5 Year Member
Joined
Jul 30, 2018
Messages
4,666
Location (City and/or State)
Richmond, VA
I have pill bugs and my leopard loves to poop in the water dish so my enclosure requires just spot cleaning
 

jsheffield

Well-Known Member
Moderator
5 Year Member
Joined
Sep 29, 2018
Messages
3,114
Location (City and/or State)
Westmoreland, NH
I have pillbugs and earthworms in my four enclosures, and I do a bit of short cleaning a few times a week and add some new substrate once in a while... that's it.

Jamie
 

S2G

Active Member
Joined
Feb 21, 2021
Messages
98
Location (City and/or State)
AL
Bioactive is just a gimmick word for adding bugs. When I kept dart frogs we added springtails & isopods. Mostly it was just the vivarium cycling with bacteria that did the main work. You use a false bottom with a great draining substrate then the bugs lived in the leaf litter. It was damp & humid under the leaves. If it got dry they would dwindle their numbers down drastically. The frogs crapped everywhere, but the misting broke it down to fertilizer basically.

I would keep redfoots almost exactly the same so that wouldnt be an issue. Neherp sells the bugs, but I bought mine from fellow foggers. The environment is so different with a testudo type I'm not sure exactly what you could add to help in that situation. I'd say give enough room & use a non rotting substrate with plants. Maybe one of the isopod species can tolerate dryer conditions. I wouldnt do earthworms theyll turn your soil into castings like the inside of a bait container.
 

Kapidolo Farms

Well-Known Member
10 Year Member!
Tortoise Club
Platinum Tortoise Club
Joined
Nov 7, 2012
Messages
5,173
Location (City and/or State)
South of Southern California, but not Mexico
Doing bioactive, includes living growing plants, not just isopods and springtails. The deeper the substrate the better, the larger the surface area the better. Sooner or later the tortoise might decide that eating 'bugs' is fun. Then they will plow through the substrate for them.

I have replenished enclosures with isopods many times. Live plants can be difficult to manage with animals that like to eat plants.

Almost no matter what you'll have to do periodic cleaning of some sort. But the bugs and plants can do much to reduce the daily cleaning.
 

myk

Active Member
Joined
Oct 4, 2023
Messages
119
Location (City and/or State)
London ontario
First, watch and pay attention to when your tortoise usually poops. Then start doing his soaks every day near to that time. Hopefully he will poop in the soak each day. That will help keep the enclosure clean.

Then you need some bugs. Here in the USA we call them springtails, and pill bugs or roly polys. I don't know the scientific name for the 2 species, but somebody will chime in to help you with that.

Anyway, once you get a colony of each bug, they eat poop, urine residue, and leftover bits of food in the substrate.

What kind of substrate do you use? The bugs like warm and humid conditions, so you need a substrate that you can wet down and it holds water. Orchid bark works really well.
Will the isopods multiply and become too many?
 
Top