New build

[Chris.]

Hello community,
at the moment I'm away on vacation and my dragon-sitters have accidentally messed up my tank setup quite a bit. So I'm thinking about redoing everything from scratch, having learned my boys preferences since the last time I did set everything up.

As he does like to dig from time to time I wanna go for a loose substrate and I'm thinking of a soil/playsand mix. It's not supposed to be bioactive, just something to dig really.
Now I find it quite hard to get soil with no fertilizer in it, but it's really easy to find organic soil locally. Those have natural/organic/non chemical fertilizers in them and I wonder if those will be fine or if I should better look for something without anything?

Hopefully someone can give some advice

 

[xp29]

Repti-soil is what I mixed with the play sand. Even organics can have ciw or chicjen manure in them.

 

[Chris.]

Can't find that on my stores here in Germany. Even Amazon only sells a 10x pack for 100 bucks, lol.
They have some soil for turtles but all those reptile specific soils say they are for tropical setups and not for dessert reptiles wich put me off them initially. My humidity is already on the high end.

 

[xp29]

Yeah I'm not sure what's available there. Just be sure to read the ingredients on the bag. If it has manure in it i wouldn't use it. To much chance of disease.

 

[Chris.]

Okey, so all plant based and no chemicals is fine if I get you right?

 

[xp29]

Okey, so all plant based and no chemicals is fine if I get you right?

Yup

 

[Chris.]

Thanks man!
What do you think about putting some pure playsand in the front region. That's where he poops so it would be easier to spot and to top off after cleaning? Also could look more interesting.

 

[xp29]

The only real issue i have with play sand is that it's dusty. You can spritz it once in a while to keep the dust down though