Not a great picture, but included it in hopes that my post won’t get lost 🥲
As the title states, I made what is probably a series of stupid mistakes. TL;DR: I preemptively purchased isopods and springtails for a bioactive gecko enclosure, and now I don’t know the best way to transfer said critters to the actual enclosure 🫠
So longer story… I purchased a crested gecko for me and my daughter in the fall.
The goal has always been to have a bioactive long term enclosure, so I worked on setting up two enclosures at once:
1) a smaller enclosure with plants in pots and a spray foam background with some additional plants, BUT with a paper towel bottom liner as I had read that was good for new/younger geckos to be able to ensure they were defecating appropriately.
2) a larger, fully bioactive enclosure that would serve as the gecko’s long term home, complete with a drainage layer, proper substrate to house a clean up crew, etc.
I stupidly underestimated how much longer it would take for me to design, create, and allow for the big enclosure to settle in and grow out, so I ordered isopods and springtails wayyy to early in the process.
That led me to making them their own little storage bin ecosystem with a substrate mix that I intended to use in the big enclosure.
But now that the big enclosure is ready for inhabitants, I don’t know the best way to move the isopods and springtails 🥲
Their populations are thriving, so idk if I should just scoop up handfuls of the substrate hoping I transfer everyone?
Or if there is a way to “bait” the clean up crew so I don’t have to move as much of the additional substrate from their set up?
The isopods would be easier to manually transfer, but the springtails are SOOO tiny that I fear I might harm them, or not be able to transfer a significant population 😭
by rivalsquatch
4 Comments
I just dumped mine into my vivarium and they’ve thrived since.
Is there less dirt in the actual enclosure than in your bin? Why not just transfer all of the bin substrate into the enclosure?
Scoop a handful of cuc into the viv then keep the little bin as a cuc colony. If your viv population crashes you will have extras in your colony to repopulate from.
Did you put any cork bark pieces in your cuc bin? Dairy cows will congregate on the underside then you can transfer easily by just bumping them off. The idea of switching dirt Anne_Thracks mentioned would work well for springtails.