Planted enclosure

Samantha frock

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I was wondering if anyone here has a setup that mimics the outside environment for redfoots? Such as having bugs In the soil along with grasses. I was thinking about adding nightcrawlers and things like pill bugs for a more natural environment where our redfoot could dig up their own meal. This would also help to keep plants I plan to add alive. Things like grasses as well as other potted plants. Where we live they spray for weeds so our redfoot can't go play in our yard. I want to create the most natural environment for him Inside as it's also cold here most of the year too.

Has anyone ever done this? What issues did you run into/ did it work?
 

Kugelette

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Feb 20, 2017
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What you're looking for is a bioactive enclosure; if you google, there are tons of tips and examples of reptiles that are kept bioactive. I keep my girls bioactive with isopods and a couple dubia. What has grown well for me and survived high humidity and trampling is chia. I also plant romaine ends and have gotten new growth that they then forage. Weeds and lettuces would probably be great additions. I have foraged moss as well. ImageUploadedByTortoise Forum1491271972.028103.jpg
 

Samantha frock

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What you're looking for is a bioactive enclosure; if you google, there are tons of tips and examples of reptiles that are kept bioactive. I keep my girls bioactive with isopods and a couple dubia. What has grown well for me and survived high humidity and trampling is chia. I also plant romaine ends and have gotten new growth that they then forage. Weeds and lettuces would probably be great additions. I have foraged moss as well. View attachment 203979
Thank you! I thought that's what it was called but I wasn't sure. Is it hard to maintain?
 

Kugelette

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No, very easy, provided you choose a clean up crew that thrives in that specific environment. Once set up they will handle molds/fungus, poops, old food, etc and provide environmental enrichment for your animals. Keeping plants is a bit trickier but growing micro greens, chia, grass, and fast-growing lettuces is pretty easy, though your torts might demolish them before they reach maturity. This is a week's growth of chia, with a planted romaine end in the background, sprouting new leaves. It's been nibbled to death, but I never have a shortage to keep planting. :)ImageUploadedByTortoise Forum1491283624.464598.jpg
 

Pearly

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View attachment 204016this is what I see after I lift the feeding slate tile. Those are red wigglers.... or... the other kind??? Whatever petco was selling for live food that day. I got a small box of them for my then baby torts for protein but they were not interested so after few tries i just dumped the whole thing into the substrate. There were supposed to be like 6 of them. That was almost 2 yrs ago. . View attachment 204017and this is what they do when they think we (the Homo Sapiens) are asleep. I call it a earthworm DRINKING FRENZY. When i first flash the light on them there are SOOOOOOO MANY of them!!!! Surrounding the water dish from each direction: one end in the water and another outside the dish, they look like a cartoonish sun rays. They very quickly sense the light and vanish into the substrate before i have a chance to get clear shot of them. There have been few times when they'd empty out that water dish overnight! I guess it's warm in there, they need to be well hydrated. View attachment 204018 there are also pillbugs (isopods) and tiny snails. My torties the latter are my torties' favorite protein/calcium snack.
 

Pearly

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ImageUploadedByTortoise Forum1491327382.713919.jpgthis picture is for size reference, right in the middle of the picture there is a small white cone shaped objectImageUploadedByTortoise Forum1491327472.632992.jpg here is this "white object" enlarged. These snails are very tiny. One probably hitched a ride on some plants I was transplanting from my garden into the terrarium. They either stay this small of get devoured by my torties before having a chance to grow. My bio-substrate is almost 2 yrs old. It does NOT smell. If there is ever a bug poo in there I do scoop it out. The critters take care of everything else including the cuttle bone which i have to put in a new one much more frequently then before all the bugs have multiplied so much.
 

TammyJ

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It all looks great and very appetising!
My torts get whatever I can find in the yard in the early morning - snails, slugs, worms, bugs....I collect them and toss them into their outdoor enclosure and they pig out.
 

Pearly

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ImageUploadedByTortoise Forum1491399521.277225.jpg appetizing?! How about this one?! I never knew that my Red Worms would come to water dish to drink like this. They do it late at night, I check on the babies whenever i get up at night of go to bed very late, and the first time the sight of red spaghetti noodles surrounding the water dish snd moving/wiggling around it like a living halo creepped me out a bit. They also drink in quantities large enough that at times the dish is empty in the morning. They somehow detect the light when I flash on them and quickly disappear into the substrate. This has started with 10 or 12 red wigglers and now there are hundreds! I should probably start some sort of vermicomposting and keep this momentum going:)
 

Pearly

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ImageUploadedByTortoise Forum1491400047.576666.jpg close up of the above, they get away so quickly it only takes me few seconds to get the right light and focus the lens to shot the picture, but for most of the that's enough time wiggle out of the dish
 
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