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Mold In Terrarium is Getting Worse


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#1 Offline FeedTheAnts - Posted May 23 2018 - 7:55 AM

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A few weeks ago I made a post asking for help with my molding terrarium(it holds my Formica colony), and I was told that I should dry the tank out, which is what I did. It dried out almost completely and the mold had disappeared, there were also some springtails in the tank at this point, and a few other decomposers. Soon I hydrated the tank again and the mold came back almost immediately. Now as of this morning it is absolutely horrific, it looks like a carpet in the tank. What should I do? I should mention that I'm capable of moving the ants out if need be.  If take them out and then set the tank back up then what should I keep in mind to do to prevent this from happening again? How necessary is a drainage layer?

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I accidentally froze all my ants 


#2 Offline Canadian anter - Posted May 23 2018 - 8:30 AM

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Very likely because of the excess nutrients. They'll die out eventually.


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#3 Offline sgheaton - Posted May 23 2018 - 8:34 AM

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If I mess up and spill my liquid food this will happen. 

 

I just scraped it together in a pile and scooped out as much as I could. 


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#4 Offline T.C. - Posted May 23 2018 - 8:56 AM

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I always put a few inches of sand in the bottom of mine know which soaks up excess water. However poor ventilation can cause serious mold issues. What do you have for a lid on this? For the longest time, I used to have screen over mine, and would hang a fan above them to keep good air circulation going.


Edited by T.C., May 23 2018 - 9:10 AM.

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#5 Offline FeedTheAnts - Posted May 23 2018 - 11:02 AM

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Very likely because of the excess nutrients. They'll die out eventually.

Are you sure they would go away? I thought most mold problems would get worse over time.

 

If I mess up and spill my liquid food this will happen. 

 

I just scraped it together in a pile and scooped out as much as I could. 

I tried this, it just came right back.

 

I always put a few inches of sand in the bottom of mine know which soaks up excess water. However poor ventilation can cause serious mold issues. What do you have for a lid on this? For the longest time, I used to have screen over mine, and would hang a fan above them to keep good air circulation going.

Ya, having a drainage layer is something that I totally wish I had done. If I take them out and reset the tank back up then I'm definitely going to put a layer of sand or gravel on the bottom. it doesn't have a lid, just a barrier, and it is in a room that has a ceiling fan on almost all the time.


I accidentally froze all my ants 


#6 Offline Waganga - Posted May 23 2018 - 1:41 PM

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Does (or did?) your terrarium have more plants in it? The mold is a decomposing fungus that is eating and breaking down *something.* That could mean they're eating dead ants, woody substrate, spilled food, or the dying/deceased plant matter. So, the goal would be to put in competing organisms that will eat what the fungus is eating, and also organisms that might feed on the fungus. Any idea what exactly this mold is eating, and is there something native you could add that would also want to eat what the mold is eating? Is there anything native you could add that would enjoy eating this mold?

 

I like to carpet bare soil areas in my terrariums with moss, as the moss generally takes up the surface area the mold or other weeds would want to occupy, and also contributes to "cleaning" the water in the terrarium.

 

Re drainage: Sand/rocks give moisture someplace to go, and charcoal can help absorb ammonia, nitrites and nitrates. Charcoal also gives "good bacteria" something to cling onto, and that bacteria helps to eat up some of the bad chemicals that can build up in a close environment. If there aren't "good bacteria" colonizing the charcoal, the charcoal eventually becomes totally saturated with toxic chemicals - that's why most fishtank owners will use some filter material from an established tank to help a new tank get established/balanced. 

 

Edit: SerpaDesign has quite a few good terrarium/vivarium videos. These might help! He's not a hugely popular youtuber, so you could even try reaching out and see if you get a response/critique from him. 


Edited by Waganga, May 23 2018 - 1:44 PM.

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#7 Offline FeedTheAnts - Posted May 23 2018 - 5:29 PM

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Does (or did?) your terrarium have more plants in it? The mold is a decomposing fungus that is eating and breaking down *something.* That could mean they're eating dead ants, woody substrate, spilled food, or the dying/deceased plant matter. So, the goal would be to put in competing organisms that will eat what the fungus is eating, and also organisms that might feed on the fungus. Any idea what exactly this mold is eating, and is there something native you could add that would also want to eat what the mold is eating? Is there anything native you could add that would enjoy eating this mold?

 

I like to carpet bare soil areas in my terrariums with moss, as the moss generally takes up the surface area the mold or other weeds would want to occupy, and also contributes to "cleaning" the water in the terrarium.

 

Re drainage: Sand/rocks give moisture someplace to go, and charcoal can help absorb ammonia, nitrites and nitrates. Charcoal also gives "good bacteria" something to cling onto, and that bacteria helps to eat up some of the bad chemicals that can build up in a close environment. If there aren't "good bacteria" colonizing the charcoal, the charcoal eventually becomes totally saturated with toxic chemicals - that's why most fishtank owners will use some filter material from an established tank to help a new tank get established/balanced. 

 

Edit: SerpaDesign has quite a few good terrarium/vivarium videos. These might help! He's not a hugely popular youtuber, so you could even try reaching out and see if you get a response/critique from him. 

Thank you so much for your help. yes, the tank used to have a lot of lentil plants in it that I removed(all but the roots). As far as organisms go I've added sringtails(which have already started to multiply it looks like), millipedes, and roly polys. Moss would be a good idea, but I always had trouble keeping them alive and from drying out. The decision I think I've come to now is that I should remove the ants, bake the dirt(something I also wish I had done), and set it back up with a drainage layer. Also, go all out on collecting organisms for the tank.

I really wanted to have a nice long term terrarium, but I feel like I kinda messed up. I don't want to have to fight mold in this tank for as long as I have when I can take the ants out and just start over

But I do have one question. Should I separate the drainage layer from the dirt with some agriculture cloth, I'm not sure that I have any. Is it necessary?


I accidentally froze all my ants 


#8 Offline Canadian anter - Posted May 23 2018 - 6:58 PM

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Very likely because of the excess nutrients. They'll die out eventually.

Are you sure they would go away? I thought most mold problems would get worse over time.

 

If I mess up and spill my liquid food this will happen. 

 

I just scraped it together in a pile and scooped out as much as I could. 

I tried this, it just came right back.

 

I always put a few inches of sand in the bottom of mine know which soaks up excess water. However poor ventilation can cause serious mold issues. What do you have for a lid on this? For the longest time, I used to have screen over mine, and would hang a fan above them to keep good air circulation going.

Ya, having a drainage layer is something that I totally wish I had done. If I take them out and reset the tank back up then I'm definitely going to put a layer of sand or gravel on the bottom. it doesn't have a lid, just a barrier, and it is in a room that has a ceiling fan on almost all the time.

 

I have a roach tank that had a lot of mold, so I just left it alone and it dissappeared.


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#9 Offline Waganga - Posted May 24 2018 - 10:45 AM

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Does (or did?) your terrarium have more plants in it? The mold is a decomposing fungus that is eating and breaking down *something.* That could mean they're eating dead ants, woody substrate, spilled food, or the dying/deceased plant matter. So, the goal would be to put in competing organisms that will eat what the fungus is eating, and also organisms that might feed on the fungus. Any idea what exactly this mold is eating, and is there something native you could add that would also want to eat what the mold is eating? Is there anything native you could add that would enjoy eating this mold?

 

I like to carpet bare soil areas in my terrariums with moss, as the moss generally takes up the surface area the mold or other weeds would want to occupy, and also contributes to "cleaning" the water in the terrarium.

 

Re drainage: Sand/rocks give moisture someplace to go, and charcoal can help absorb ammonia, nitrites and nitrates. Charcoal also gives "good bacteria" something to cling onto, and that bacteria helps to eat up some of the bad chemicals that can build up in a close environment. If there aren't "good bacteria" colonizing the charcoal, the charcoal eventually becomes totally saturated with toxic chemicals - that's why most fishtank owners will use some filter material from an established tank to help a new tank get established/balanced. 

 

Edit: SerpaDesign has quite a few good terrarium/vivarium videos. These might help! He's not a hugely popular youtuber, so you could even try reaching out and see if you get a response/critique from him. 

Thank you so much for your help. yes, the tank used to have a lot of lentil plants in it that I removed(all but the roots). As far as organisms go I've added sringtails(which have already started to multiply it looks like), millipedes, and roly polys. Moss would be a good idea, but I always had trouble keeping them alive and from drying out. The decision I think I've come to now is that I should remove the ants, bake the dirt(something I also wish I had done), and set it back up with a drainage layer. Also, go all out on collecting organisms for the tank.

I really wanted to have a nice long term terrarium, but I feel like I kinda messed up. I don't want to have to fight mold in this tank for as long as I have when I can take the ants out and just start over

But I do have one question. Should I separate the drainage layer from the dirt with some agriculture cloth, I'm not sure that I have any. Is it necessary?

 

 

Redoing the entire thing is probably the most efficient way to tackle it. So, if you can coax the colony out, it might be a good idea to start from scratch. 

 

It's a good idea to separate the drainage from the dirt using some kind of barrier, otherwise the dirt drains into the vacant spaces in the drainage layer. In the past, I've used polyester craft felt, because it's what I've had. But, I'm inexperienced in making terrariums that include digging fauna (ex: ants), so I'm not sure what they won't try to dig through. I'm trying my hand at my own "terraricarum" build, but I've yet to introduce ants into it. I used fiberglass window screen and upholstery thread to make a pillow, which I then filled up with activated carbon for fishtanks. Large rocks underneath the pillow, and pea gravel rocks above the pillow. I usually wouldn't enclose the carbon like that, but I don't want ants or other critters moving the carbon around/mixing it with the soil. I also used pea gravel OVER the pillow because they should be too big for the ants to displace, so less likely that ants will dig down to and get stuck in/try to live in/drown in drainage layer.

 

Then I filled the main area with some compost, an earthworm, potting soil, river silt/sand and some mulch. I'm waiting to see what "weeds" are going to grow out of the soil I added before I start adding my own small plants to finish it off.

 

I'm new to antkeeping, so I don't have an ant colony to move into this setup. I made it VERY far in advance of ever putting ants into it because I want it to develop it's own stable system before I add the ants. If it's going to get overrun by mold, or isopods, or weeds or something else, I want to control for that before I add the ants in. In fact, I already had a burrowing beetle show up inside somehow, and dig up all the moss I planted.  :facepalm: There was nothing for him to eat, so now he's just lying dead in a pile of tilled moss. I wouldn't want to be trying to fix that kind of thing around an escape-happy ant colony.

 

I got my moss from a local natural area, and I live in a somewhat arid environment (Colorado), so the moss I've gotten is used to my climate. It does dry out if I don't water it, but when I do water it, it comes back to life. There's a lot of variety in moss, you just have to find the kind of moss that thrives in the environment you're building. 


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#10 Offline FeedTheAnts - Posted May 24 2018 - 12:49 PM

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Okay, here's what I'm dealing with now. I tried coaxing the colony out by destroying their nest after I removed as much as the dirt possible before I broke into their nest(so they would have no dirt to dig new tunnels and they would be forced to move into the formicarium I was going to sit inside of the tank), and then I proceeded to lifting the rock they were living under. It turns out that they were nesting under the rock but also had a lot of tunnels in the area underneath the rock(an area a few inches in diameter). I couldn't possibly manage to destroy the nest considering there extensive tunnels without it having a huge chance of failure. So the idea I came up with was to simply go along with my plan of baking the dirt and adding the drainage layer, the only downside was that under these circumstances I wouldn't be able to remove and bake all the dirt, and I wouldn't be able cover the entire bottom of the tank with a drainage layer because the ants were still in the tank and occupying a little area of it. I think it'll be good enough though. I'm currently baking the dirt and I'm going to probably set the tank back up tomorrow.


I accidentally froze all my ants 


#11 Offline FeedTheAnts - Posted May 24 2018 - 4:38 PM

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Okay, went ahead and set the terrarium back up after baking the dirt and putting in the drainage layer. So far the ants have been digging like mad to repair the damage done mostly just to the surface of their nest. Thanks to everyone for your help, so hoping I don't see mold come back


I accidentally froze all my ants 





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