Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm starting to have a problem with mold growing in my BRB's tank. I just cleaned the entire enclosure, substrate, all the plants, hide boxes, etc. Two days later the mold was back. I have him in a 20L tank with a glass top. For substrate I was using aspen shavings, but am now trying ground coconut shell 9he seems to like it) I'm keeping the humidity in the range of 80-85% and temps in the low 80's. So I suppose that my question is: How do you maintain temp and humidity without mold/mildew growing? Any suggestions should be appreciated. Thanks!!

Boogman,
...You could back your temperature down a couple degrees and the snake would be fine and the mold would not grow nearly as fast. When you clean the cage and furniture you are probably just knocking the mold and mildew off the outside surfaces. There are probably mold spores down into the surfaces and these regrow new visible mold pretty quickly. If you spray everything down with a Niolvasan solution when cleaning and let it sit on the surfaces for several minutes it will kill a lot more of the mold and visible amounts of mold will not come back so quickly. You can leave the Nolvasan solution on the surfaces and let them dry or rinse before putting them back into the cage. A Clorox bleach solution will also kill most of the spores but the surfaces must be thoroughly rinsed after using the Clorox solution. Clorox may also bleach out the surfaces and it will definitely harm the plants. I like the coconut chunks much better than the ground coconut. BRBs do burrow and the ground coconut is messy when they burrow into it.
Jeff

>>I'm starting to have a problem with mold growing in my BRB's tank. I just cleaned the entire enclosure, substrate, all the plants, hide boxes, etc. Two days later the mold was back. I have him in a 20L tank with a glass top. For substrate I was using aspen shavings, but am now trying ground coconut shell 9he seems to like it) I'm keeping the humidity in the range of 80-85% and temps in the low 80's. So I suppose that my question is: How do you maintain temp and humidity without mold/mildew growing? Any suggestions should be appreciated. Thanks!!

Jeff has suggested some very good points. The only time I had mold grow was when I first set up the intial enclosure and put some commercially prepared grape vine in there. I removed in all about a month late because I could keep the mold from growing on it. I haven't had a problem since then. Occasionally I have bought bags of cypress mulch to put in tanks and if it has a hint of mold smell I use it for my flower garden rather than in the snake cage. I think you can usually smell it before you see it.