Preventing mold

Hello. Today I would like to ask you how to prevent mold on tree bark. I set up an enclosure for my recent acquisition - around 4 1/2'' P. metallica female, but I noticed mold on one of the trees. Sadly, the terrarium is made of glass and I cannot do much to improve the ventilation so I wanted to ask if there are other tricks to dealing with mold (aside from keeping the cage dry. I am using an approach practiced by someone from this forum who has bred P. metallica and it requires the cage to be moist around half of the year). All I can think of is remove the mold until there is nothing nutritional in the tree itself (mold wont appear if there's nothing to sustain itself from, right?)

Here is a link I found about preparing wood for enclosures and different types that are good for such use.

http://www.caudata.org/cc/articles/wood.shtml

Put it in a proper enclosure that has the needed ventilation. Mold is basically a product of moisture combined with a lack of ventilation...if you are intent on keeping it moist, proper ventilation is priority #1.

I tried looking for a proper enclosure, but since it's basically the end of that moist season, I didn't want to give 100 bucks for a small terrarium... Darn Bulgaria, can't find a normal terrarium (not a glass one with not very good ventilation. Nobody is selling plexiglass terrariums)It's too expensive. I'll try manipulating it somehow to add more ventilation. It's not too moist, by the way. Just lightly moist sub and a water bowl.

Your gonna think I'm nuts but this is what I do for smaller pieces of bark...
I take my bark bake it low for 20-30mins let it cool...
Throw some sphagnum moss in a ziplock bag and half fill the bag with hot water..
After a few mins the water turns green/brown from the tannins in the moss.
I soak the slabs of bark in the moss water over night...
sphagnum is acidic and it soaks into the bark and helps keep mold from growing..

14pokies said:

Your gonna think I'm nuts but this is what I do for smaller pieces of bark...
I take my bark bake it low for 20-30mins let it cool...
Throw some sphagnum moss in a ziplock bag and half fill the bag with hot water..
After a few mins the water turns green/brown from the tannins in the moss.
I soak the slabs of bark in the moss water over night...
sphagnum is acidic and it soaks into the bark and helps keep mold from growing..

Click to expand...

Makes perfect sense. I'm gonna have a to start doing that

Graeboe said:

Makes perfect sense. I'm gonna have a to start doing that

Click to expand...

Good on ya mate! I even go as far as expanding my coco fiber in moss water.. I rarely have trouble with mold any more...

14pokies said:

Good on ya mate! I even go as far as expanding my coco fiber in moss water.. I rarely have trouble with mold any more...

Click to expand...

I've only had trouble once when the gf accidently dropped a full 32oz cup of water in the a metallica enclosure when she was filling the water dish lol thank god it wasn't in a terrestrial enclosure