It’s fun and easy to keep a healthy, clean bioactive vivarium for your mantids. If set up correctly, it will thrive. Most enclosures with bioactive substrate not having to clean the habitat at all.

1. Coco Fiber, to keep the moisture in along with some cork bark pieces and magnolia pods. Isopods love them. They especially

2. Dried Leaf litter on top of the moss (Magnolia, oak etc)

3. Add whatever isopods and springtails you like. Depending on temp and humidity, certain ones will fare better in different conditions. Having the layers helps in the very hot enclosures but still must be misted

4. Springtail food and isopods will thrive while also cleaning the habitat
   

Plants can thrive in these substrates. Mantids can eat some of your isopods no problem. Select the correct plants for your enclosures. The humidity, temperature and light of your enclosure should all be considered when selecting your plants. We recommend air plants like tilanzias and other epiphytes like orchids and bromiliads. Be sure that plants are pesticide and fertilizer free as that will harm your mantids.

a bioactive vivarium is a container full of living things that works like a little biome, with each form of life collaborating to keep the environment suitable for everything inside. Our bioactive vivariums have it all:animals,plants,microfauna andfungi, and lots of them, because the more they do to keep their environment healthy, the less we have to do!