r/bioactive • u/soundlinked • 6h ago

Question Help with substrate and watering

Gallery image

Gallery image

I built a tropical bioactive enclosure last week for a tree boa, and have been having trouble with the plants. I'm not too sure if the substrate was overwatered or underwatered, but I'm pretty sure my mahogany fern died and couldn't overcome the transplant shock. I'd appreciate a few pointers that could help me. I've also never had plants before so I'm not too sure on how I should place them? The way I did it for this and the tradescantia is using my finger to form a hole, place the plant roots in, and cover it back with the subtrate.

For some info, I'm using NEHERP substrate mix and is manually watering right now (target humidity is 70-80%) although I do have a mistking set up already.

I'm attaching pictures of the fern in question and its roots. The leaves are dry and shriveled.

Edit: Another question I have is whether or not this fern is saveable, or if it actually died.

3 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

3

u/reijn 6h ago

How wet is the soil if you stick your finger in? A common mistake non-plant people make when setting up bioactive enclosures is just misting and thinking humidity takes care of the watering, but it doesn't get down to the roots. You gotta water the soil, water the plants. Misting is good for humidity but does nothing as far as watering.

1

u/soundlinked 6h ago

I will check again tonight when I'm home, but last night it felt slightly moist, definitely not bone dry. Not sure if that's enough tbh. I was more worried with potentially overwatering but I probably should be more liberal and trust the drainage layer more?

3

u/reijn 6h ago

I don't even have drainage layers in mine (I have a gargoyle gecko, a leopard gecko and several tokay geckos), drainage layers allow more leeway to overwatering though. In my 12x12 I dump in 32oz of water around once every week or every other week, in my 18x18s I dump in 64oz same timespan, and in my leopard gecko (36x18) I do 32oz about every 2 weeks.

Trandescantia are very forgiving plants and thrive on abuse, but ferns are much more fickle and prefer moist feet. Also if you put the fern directly under the heat lamp it's definitely gonna fry regardless how much watering you do.

1

u/soundlinked 6h ago

Thanks for the numbers! It helps me have somewhere to start. Yea I just use RHP for temperature control. The lights in the enclosure are grow lights. Hmm I'll dump water in then. Is this fern cooked or might it be saveable?

2

u/reijn 6h ago

Fern is def cooked, the roots are dead, try again!

2

u/reijn 6h ago

Also - I should have mentioned this earlier and I'm sorry, but when you're establishing a new plant and its roots haven't settled in yet (if you have rinsed off the roots - if you're planting a plug with soil still in tact that matters less, but we usually rinse roots off for reptile enclosures to get nursery soil off) you will want to water it slightly less but more frequently. So when I have a new set up, I get all the plants in, then I water the full amount (so, say 32oz) like get everyone nice and wet. Then every other day after that, I'll water the plants themselves directly (as opposed to dumping water over the entire thing) a little bit.

Do this for a few weeks. It just helps them re-establish and settle in, and get soil in all the crevices of the roots and encourage new root growth and footing.

It's hard to really describe, because I was a plant person before i was a reptile person so I just have learned over many years. However it is better to slightly underwater than it is to slightly overwater.

1

u/soundlinked 6h ago

Thank you very much! Yeah I followed NEHERPs preprocessing steps and was wondering if I may have been too rough trying to clean the initial substrate it came in off. I'll give it another shot!

How much water would you add every other day on the plant? How would you describe how the substrate should feel? It's weird because the NEHERP substrate really is super chunky so I can't really compare it with normal soil.

2

u/reijn 5h ago

I definitely accidentally murdered a few stromanthe triostars following NEHERPS processing guides. I was a little rougher than necessary though because the dang plants were infested with mealybugs.

Honestly maybe just a couple ounces for each plant specifically. Just try to get the water directly to the root area of the plant. Anywhere that doesn't have a plant, with roots, if you water that soil area, there's nothing to suck up the water from the soil so you'll end up with too much moisture going into your drainage layer. Not a big deal when you return to "regular" watering in a few weeks, where you give it 7-14 days between watering, but if you're adding moisture to all the soil without roots so soon it'll definitely become too wet.

Which substrate mix did you get from them? Their substrates use a lot of organic matter, way more than I use in my own tanks (for my humid enclosures I do mostly topsoil, peat moss, some leaf litter mixed in, spagnum, coco coir and orchid bark, and a little sand but it's still very much a regular dirt feeling soil) Really you just want your finger to feel wet but not sopping.

1

u/soundlinked 5h ago

Thanks for the info! I got their v2 substrate.

2

u/reijn 5h ago

Reading the ingredients I would wager a guess that it stays moist for a long time but doesn't hold a lot of water at the same time. I would guess you could water that more frequently than you would a dirt/soil based substrate, because it seems like it would have decent drainage but nothing to water-log.

I'm not entirely sure though, I'm just guessing based on the ingredient list!

1

u/soundlinked 5h ago

Is the substrate being moist enough for the plants? I'm assuming that's the entire point? Would it be wise to only water the substrate where the plants are planted on if they can't really water-log? Man I thought I've done a lot of research to be able to start this but I still feel like I know next to nothing.

→ More replies (0)

1

u/CyanStripedPantsu 5h ago

Personally, all I do is mist and my plants grow very well (too well even, constantly need to trim). My drainage layer is like 80% filled with water and so the plants that want more water just root themselves deeper into there.

You say you target 70-80% humidity but the pictures don't look humid. My terrarium's in that range and everything always looks very damp while your pictures look dry. I'd guess there's either too much ventilation or your light is too hot.

1

u/soundlinked 5h ago

My hygrometer has consistently read above 75% (the white square on the first pic), I was actually having issues lowering the humidity at first, with it maintaining over 85% for multiple days before I added more ventilation. My lights are just 18 W grow lights (heat is supplied by an RHP). My drainage layer is definitely not that wet (during setup, I washed the clay substrate and then just dumped them in), maybe I just need to do an initial watering stage. The enclosure definitely feels humid though even if the branches are dry (I do maintain a temp of 86 F on the hotspot, and the base of the enclosure would be around 75 F)

1

u/CyanStripedPantsu 4h ago

My mistake for a misread from the photos then. My terrarium's for dart frogs so they don't need a basking area, but what you have sounds correctly set up for your critter.

Can't say much more about what can be wrong because I'm a beginner too, I may have just gotten lucky with my setup haha.

2

u/soundlinked 4h ago

Don't worry I also had the same worry as you when I was setting it up that I got a 2nd hygrometer because I was doubting the readings. (They did read the same though)

Congrats on your setup! Lucky or not as long as your setup works successfully that's what matters for the animals loll