Crested gecko, enclosure already bought, so I am pricing drainage layer, substrate, leaf litter, plants, cleanup crew and a light. Every guide I read lands near 150 and my basket sits at just over 300 without a single plant that is more than a cutting. Either I am buying the wrong things or the guides are pricing a smaller tank. What did yours come to once it was actually finished and running?
I bought a twenty pound grow light, watched every plant stretch and die over two months, then bought a proper bar light and had to replant the whole tank. That mistake cost me the price of the good light plus the plants plus the time. Buy the light once.
I bought bagged premixed substrate for my first build and mixed my own for the next three, and the difference was roughly a third of the cost for a mix I liked better. What I would not cheap out on again is the drainage and the mesh, because redoing the bottom of a planted tank means dismantling everything above it.
The number that matters is not the build, it is the year. My paper towel and repti carpet setups cost me something every few weeks forever, and the bioactive cost a lump up front and then almost nothing. Two years in I have bought one plant and one bag of sphagnum, so it overtook the cheap option some time in the first year.
Comparing it against the ongoing cost of paper towels rather than against nothing is a much fairer comparison than the one I was making.
Two years into mine the total ongoing spend is one bag of sphagnum and some springtail food. It really does stop costing money.
Enclosure, light, cleanup crew. Everything else can be improvised, grown or scavenged, and most of the 300 in your basket is things in bags.
Ask locally before you order plants. Cuttings of pothos, ficus pumila and tradescantia are what keepers throw away every time they trim a tank, and I have never paid for any of the three.
@notetaking_ivo · 7d ago · 3 replies
My last one, itemised: substrate mixed myself from coir, sphagnum, bark fines, charcoal and a bit of soil for a fraction of the bagged price, leaf litter free because I collect and dry my own, drainage layer from clay balls that I have now reused three times, springtails cheap and isopods entirely dependent on whether you buy plain dairy cows or a named morph. The light is where budgets quietly die, because the cheap fixtures will not grow anything and you buy twice. Realistically 150 is possible if you mix your own substrate and take cuttings, and 300 is what it costs if you buy everything in bags.
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@northwindow_nia · last wk.
Oak and magnolia from a park nowhere near a road, collected dry, then baked low in the oven for a bit. Free forever and my isopods breed better on it than on anything I have bought.
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@curious_wren · last wk.
Where do you get leaf litter you trust? That is the bit I assumed I had to buy.
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