KaroKoenig
Arachnobaron
- Joined
- Dec 7, 2019
- Messages
- 437
Clay: as mentioned, from a sand pit. It's a postglacial fluvial/dune sand deposit from a later stage of the last ice age in our area. It has clay/silt lenses in it, which I took with me. You can also buy clay powder in bags here where I live, in different colours.
I washed the sand and baked the clay. Which was quite a nuisance actually, since it got so hard that I had to crush the lumps with a hammer to get my clay powder. Mixing the substrate worked well after that.
As for sanitizing: well, if you think coco fibre or indeed any substrate you buy for whatever amount of money, creates a sanitized environment, you are much mistaken. "Life, uh, finds a way" - Dr. Ian Malcolm.
If you bake the stuff, most macroscopic life in there will die (like small beetles, centipedes, whatever. The rest you need not worry about, especially in a GBB enclosure, which is too dry for most higher lifeforms anyway. Most keepers here don't even bother with baking the soil, because the vast majority of life in the soil is actually beneficial for a clean substrate environment.
Man-made contaminants, like pesticides or other chemicals are the only concern. That's why I recommended a long walk. Deep enough into a forest that you're far away from, e.g. intensive agriculture.
I washed the sand and baked the clay. Which was quite a nuisance actually, since it got so hard that I had to crush the lumps with a hammer to get my clay powder. Mixing the substrate worked well after that.
As for sanitizing: well, if you think coco fibre or indeed any substrate you buy for whatever amount of money, creates a sanitized environment, you are much mistaken. "Life, uh, finds a way" - Dr. Ian Malcolm.
If you bake the stuff, most macroscopic life in there will die (like small beetles, centipedes, whatever. The rest you need not worry about, especially in a GBB enclosure, which is too dry for most higher lifeforms anyway. Most keepers here don't even bother with baking the soil, because the vast majority of life in the soil is actually beneficial for a clean substrate environment.
Man-made contaminants, like pesticides or other chemicals are the only concern. That's why I recommended a long walk. Deep enough into a forest that you're far away from, e.g. intensive agriculture.
