Mould at my Pimps

I just recently saw a tiny bit of what I think is moul,d on some swamp wood, in my 90% humidity false buttom setup. It currently displays as a very few small white greenish dots on a 4by4cm area of the wood, but I'm afraid it will grow further/bigger. I'm unaware wether this bad for the scorpions, but I certainly know it's not healthy for myself is there any way to prevent it? Should I allow more ventilation in the terrarium? (5x45cm in the top is current ventilation)

*Connie* wrote:

ok. take it out and get some cork bark. That wont get mould on it. Then you have a nice safe hide
xxx

I'd rather find a way to prevent it, before I tear their beautiful enclosure up. Cork bark can't replace their current hide, and they just luuv it!

I've actually had problems with cork getting mold on it sometimes -- your best (temporary) bet is to remove the hide and bake it in an oven to sterilize it (probably ~350 for ~15 minutes). That will kill the mold and hopefully slow down its return for a while.

More ventilation is always good. If you have a false-bottom, you don't need to worry about things drying out too quickly.

I'll try that ;D I hope I wont ruin their whole burrow by taking it out :\

*Connie* wrote:

they are very understanding when burrows are destroyed. They curse at you for a bit but then rebuild
xxx

Yeah! You have no idea how angry my girlie just was when I removed it, but I realized they have made a whole tunnel, like 30cm long into a burrow, so I kinda only destroyed their entrance ;D looks pretty cosy in there (:

I cleaned the piece of wood and now it's in the oven, I hope it will work =) Thanks for the advice, I'll keep info coming ;D

A little hard to see, but

1. Is the entrance to their burrow, made with the wood I'm currently baking. They dug all the way into the corner, as the red line shows, and then about 10cm downwards almost down to waterlevel! (The enclosure is 45cm wide/long)

2. Is their other burrow, which they never use. They seem to like to be in the same place on top of each other ;D

3. Is another "opening" to their tunnels they made. A bit hard to see on that photo, though..

I don't have any good camera, but this is the best photo I could get of my female;

maybe i'm way late on this, but 90 percent humidity is a bit excessive for Emps. i keep mine at just moist to the touch and with adequate ventilation, but not too much as to dry it out quickly.


j'sayin.

Nothing wrong with 90 percent. I think it only gets to be a problem when the ventilation is too restricted.

Got a lot more ventilation now, not sure about humidity, but substrate is always moist. A shallow water dish with an infra-red bulb just over it, and a fairly nice false-buttom setup provides this easily.

I do not place water dishes under heat lamps because I dont want to keep refilling water dishes every time I turn around and I dont want the water to get too hot an potentially harm a scorpion that climbs in. But that's just me.

I think he was doing it to promote evaporation, and thus increase humidity. And it would have to be a really powerful lamp to heat the water to a dangerous level.

What iHeart just said

Where are you getting 90% from?

False buttom setup + infra-red bulb, warmth above the water dish and occasional misting - unless you mean where I got the numbers from, I got 2 different humidity gauges in the tank, showing 90 and 85, near ground and 4cm above.