A couple of (probably) silly questions.

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IanF

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I've just gone out and bought myself a tank for a fire salamander. I've taken a look at substrates and decided to buy B&Qs Multi purpose organic compost (no chemicals, some peat in it) and some gravel for filtration. Also I bought some wood chips(large) for the top. Now my questions are, is this suitable? How do I go about sterilising the soil? How do I sterilise the Wood chips? Anything else I should do or know?
 
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Micorowave the bark and you can bake the soil in the oven to sterilise it.
I find hydroleca works really well as a drainage layer.
 
berksmike said:
you can bake the soil in the oven to sterilise it.
Click to expand...

As a onetime student of soil science, I would not recommend this. If you dry the soil completely, you can damage its structure, and reduce the water-holding capacity. It's also not a particularly effective means of sterilization- wet heat (e.g. autoclave/pressure cooker) is much better than dry heat.

I can't really see any reason to sterilize soil unless there's a good reason to suspect it's contaminated in some way- and commercial compost is unlikely to harbour anything particularly nasty.
 
caleb said:
As a onetime student of soil science, I would not recommend this. If you dry the soil completely, you can damage its structure, and reduce the water-holding capacity. It's also not a particularly effective means of sterilization- wet heat (e.g. autoclave/pressure cooker) is much better than dry heat.
Click to expand...

That's a great piece of information about soil.

I'd agree that sterilization is not necessary.
 
Ok well only put in the bark chips and the soil for about 5 minutes, and a found a couple of dead insects, which is pretty much why I put it in. I just wanted to be sure there wasn't anything in there. Thats me finished setting everything up, I think I might post a thread on it to see if I can better it in anyway. Thanks for your input.
 
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