Are you talking about animal bedding wood pellets? The ones ive seen were pine. I thought pine was bad
The wood pellets I was talking about are BBQ smoking pellets, they are various kinds of hardwood - cherry, apple, mesquite, hickory, blends of all the previous… When they get wet they basically disintegrate into sawdust. When you integrate them into cage media, they provide a food source for things like isopods and springtails, act as a moisture sink, are fantastic for allowing beneficial fungus to establish, and break down into nice compost that enriches the media over time:
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Pit-Boss-Apple-20-lb-Wood-Pellets/5013794401
The pine I suggested adding is the stuff they use for orchids:
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I know a couple old-schoolers that used it exclusively and never had issues. So…
For the purposes I was talking, as a minor component in a much more diverse mix, there is no issue
Look at it this way, do you think snakes in the wild completely avoid long-leaf pine forests???
Returning to the talk of plants, though
The pics I promised:
The Hoya I have in my black milk cage. This was a single vine in a 5cm pot when I planted it.
The creeping bromeliad I have in the Candoia cage and also my chondro cage:
Whole plant
And all of these are new growth from the past three or four months
The rhizoid fern in my Tanimbar cage
And a couple close-ups of the rhizome that it spreads by
I will warn that this thing can be a very enthusiastic spreader. I have to cut out 80% of it on an annual basis to keep it under control. It also like to make jailbreak attempts through the vents. Those roots you see on the wall in the last pic are from where this plant anchored itself and grew along the side
And this is my “overflow” cage for the Wandering Jew. Everything you see here is from material that I have just torn out of the other cages and thrown in this cage. I do not plant it or secure it or anything, it just grows and grows and grows