best substrate

[rosanna123]

hi i want to find out the most popular substrate

[lee2211]

There's a lot of contreversy.
Really Coir tends to be best, but as it's expensive most people mix it with top soil or something similar.

I bake all of mine in the microwave anyway, so it doesn't really matter. It's always good to make a portion of the tank moss as they absolutely love it.

[crossless]

I use peat. In my country you can't get soil without fertilizer so have to buy peat. Coir is maybe good in small terrariums but if you need like about 30litres of substrate in one terrarium I go with the easiest and cheapest one. Moss would be nice too in small terrariums, but how long it stays nice, you can't know for sure. I have heard of leaf litter too but it's too hard to find eggs from there if you have species that lays loads of eggs.

[coyote]

I'm another fan of coir. My snails like it too. ;D

[rosanna123]

i currently use muti-purpose compost but i have been looking around and i want to mimic the wild so i was thinkin of using exo terra plantation soil, with a layer of exo terra forst floor over the top

[puzzle]

I used compost for a few years but swapped over to coir about 7 years ago and never looked back

[crossless]

I was wondering what would be most ideal substrate used with peat so you could make peat more fluffy?

My huge tigersnail tank needs to have really wet peat otherwise it dries out too soon. When it's wet it's so heavy that substrate can't "breath" much so it has started to rot. So I'm trying next substrate change half bag of peat and other half of peat/wood chip/bark.

Coir isn't maybe in big amounts isn't really ideal because I need about 65litres of subtrate at once. : DDD

[poekai]

can i ask, what is coil?

[foghog]

it is coconut husks. the outer fiber of a coconut shell shredded, literally. in fact if you can just get some coconuts, you can make it yourself by simply stripping it off in shreds. the color of the coir is from how ripe the coconut is, and thats all really.

[iloncia]

What's the difference with plantation soil and multi purpose compost, please?
I was using fertiliser free soil so far, but i ordered them coir substrate now, as a result of reading this post. I hope they will like it.