Hi all! I’m hoping to make all my enclosures for my ball pythons bioactive. I have a question about isopods. How many do I need for a 4x2x2 enclosure? I’ve seen different responses and I’m pretty confused about it. Thanks!
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Well if you let the enclosure settle/grow a bit before introducing your animal then you should only need a couple small containers that will have time to breed together but if you want to immediately put the animal in you could still get away with only a couple small containers, they’d just take longer to grow in numbers. I only bought two small containers of isopods and one small container of springtails for my big skink enclosure and my cuc grew so quick lmao however since I’m moving, I have my skink in a smaller easier to move temporary enclosure and I moved all the cuc into a small enclosure for them to do whatever until I move and upgrade my skink to an 7ft enclosure.
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Cleanup crew populations are going to be dynamic. Best thing to do is introduce a decent sized colony and then let them establish for a month or so before introducing your animal, this gets a base population stable. Once the animal is introduced, the population will boom and bust in synch with the ebb and flow of the animal’s feed/defecate/shed cycle
Also worth noting that you will still need to clean the majority of waste out yourself, the clean up crew is there to handle the bits remaining after you clean, not take care of everything for you
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This is what I thought all along, especially for larger snakes.
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As @t_h_wyman said you’ll definitely need to still do a majority of the work cleaning out waste from your BP.
A majority of cleanup crews are used for much smaller animals like smaller colubrids, geckos, small lizards, etc. All of which have much smaller 
s.
With a BP your cleanup crew may not be able to handle all of that without help. However leaving in shed skin is great for the CC, I find isopods love munching on it and actually supplement my Iso colony with sheds from a variety of my snakes.
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Completely agree that you still MUST clean your tank. Having a CUC and live plants can stretch your substrate change mileage a bit. Though another expert did a video where he tested things and said having a CUC made zero difference so not sure who to believe honestly. One tip is use plants in terracotta planters with water catchment below. This helps keep your tank from molding. Also, consider large snakes will simply smash any and all exposed plants! It’s kind of their thing.
A semi-bio active set up can be great. One expert told me about them. You will also need a drainage layer- you can use clay balls on the bottom but you need a mesh or something above that and under the dirt, sand, mulch, etc. You will perfect it in time- sounds like you are on the right path.
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If I am not fast, the isopods in my Rhamphiophis colony can take down an entire shed in less than 24 hours. They REALLY like sheds
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