Some say Mold!!! Others say mold and Isopods. Others say Deep clean!?

I have been doing some tests, with regards to mold and Isopods.

I seem to have deleted or misfiled the photos of the start of the test and the end of the test, and the problem is I have cleaned all the tanks.
So I need to wait for some more mold to grow in one of the tanks to reproduce the photos and the tests.

I have had my doubts that Isopods do not help against mold, spores and curtain thing that grow in ones tank.

As I said I doubt that Isopods help, and it is slowly becoming a truth, I know Isopods help for a couple of other things and they do a good job of it, I have a couple of photos I will post some recent pictures of mold that has started and is at this moment growing in the tanks, I will update them tomorrow when I get a chance to get the camera out.

First tank, has got mold, I added 20 Isopods to hopefully help curve the mold, as there was a mommy with egg sack, and I did not wont to go digging around and moving here nest to clean the tank out,
The mold started about 4 days after she went and laid her egg cases, the mold has spread through the tank almost doubled in amount, it is even growing a mushroom.

Any way, added the 20 Isopods and they have not helped stop the mold, it is still growing.









Will update pictures tomorrow.

Then just to show you how robust this mold/spore is, this substrate is kept bone dry only spray it in one corner, and still the mold grows, I have dug out the effected areas to hopefully stop the mold/spores.
I removed the first mushroom that was growing in the ladies tank after the crickets made meal out of it.
Then 2 days after that a new one poped up in exactly the same spot where the first one was.

I think Isopods should be added as a preventative measure and not as an attempt to clean up an existing problem.

I have heard Isopods are more for mites?

Swifty wrote:


Agree 100%, prevention is better than cure.

The main reason why I have tried the test is because, people say so, but there is no hard evidence that they do eat mold, then I have been asked if Isopods do eat mold, I don't know the answer to that, so I would like to know what the real answer is and if indeed it is fact or fiction, what people are saying about the Isopods and mold and mites.

There are many a factor, there is also many different kinds of mold.

The fact is Isopods are omnivores, they only eat dead and decaying plant matter and dead and decaying animals.
Mold is alive, as in the since that it is growing all the time!


And then getting onto mites, I think the same thing applies, they are omnivores.
I think they eat the mite eggs, but I will not count my chickens before they have hatched, on this test!

I'm busy with test with mites and Isopods, just have to breed some mites know.

I had mites at a stage, added some isopods and they seemed to have helped a huge amount. I also had a few "miggies" the little fly things in a few tanks and the isopods have helped to decrease their numbers as well

cascade wrote:


Removing the mushroom is like picking the apple. The main body of the plant is still there, preparing to grow more apples. On the other hand, if you don't want apples killing your lawn, but you still want to keep the apple tree, maybe ...

BTW, the "mold" you're dealing with isn't really mold. It's actually a mushroom mycelium. And the mushroom goes by the name of Leucocoprinus birnbaumii. Read the Wikipedia article and Tom Volk's Fungus of the Month for February 2002 for more information. Because tarantulas don't eat fungi the fact that this mushroom is mildly toxic (to humans at least) doesn't effect them. However there was a report on the ATS forum of at least one case where a tarantula died, apparently after drinking water into which a mushroom had fallen and decomposed.

So, your test may have been complicated by the fact that veteran fungus eaters (aka isopods) may recognize them as poisonous and won't touch your yellow mold/mushroom for that reason.

As a test, you might gently mist or otherwise dampen a small piece of bread. Place it in the middle of a saucer and overturn a coffee or tea cup on it to hold in the humidity. Check it every day. When it finally develops a nice growth of common bread mold, place a very small piece of the moldy bread in the cage with the isopods. In a day or two, do they eat it? Report back on this thread so we can keep track of the history of this discussion.

While Rhizopus is still somewhat toxic (actually more allergenic to humans than toxic, we accidentally eat it all the time), my presumption is that the isopods can handle it okay. If they eat the moldy bread, then we know that they eat at least some kinds of fungi, and at least that question has been answered, and my hypothesis about the toxic Leucocoprinus gains more strength.

We had periodic outbreaks of these mushrooms in our goliath cages. I think the mushrooms were quite scenic. They'd reach heights of 20 to 30 cm, the caps would reach 10 cm across, and they'd shed a dusting of gray spores over everything in the cage including the tarantula!

I still stand by my original contention: To deal with mold and mushrooms in tarantula cages, either keep the cage dry, or keep a spare cage stored in the closet, set up but completely dry (covered with plastic food wrap to keep it clean, perhaps), ready for dampening and a quick switch of the tarantula whenever there's a problem. A dry cage is a lot less work. A damp cage can mean switching the tarantula and cleaning the dirty/contaminated cage as often as once a week. You REALLY have to love that spider to put up with all that work!

Enjoy your little 10-legged garbage cans!

(Did you catch that one? "10-legged garbage cans" are isopods!)

Thank you for that information Stanley, really helps!!

I was tiring to think where I would go to find information on different kinds of mold.

I must say it is pretty cute to see the lady (L. parahybana) walking around with yellow shocks on, a bit worrying though.

I have been breeding isopods with the intention of them cleaning up things I might have missed. However I have never used them.

I do however keep the vivarium in which I breed the isopods, substrate moist as well as the wood inside their vivarium. Their main food source I feed them are potato peals which does grow mold real quick, and lettuce. I have however never seen mold on the potato peals so far. I also tried feeling them a Hisser that died of old age, that I had to cut open to see if they indeed feed on the roach. Well so far I have 3 uneaten roaches, and zero potato peals and lettuce.

I am still skeptic about adding them into my Tarantulas vivarium, even if they do clean it. But to be really honest. I would rather take time off and clean any vivarium, if needed. Most of the times I just remove uneaten food.

I will try and see if I will be able to do a photo session where I will be feeding them molded potato peal, but my question is if they are used to eating potato peals, and they do end up eating a molded peal, would that not just demonstrate that mold have no effect on them?

So, the advice given by Stanley, I have started to grow mold,

I got rice mold, bun mold(bread), coffee mold and dry dog food mold.

Here are some of the mold pictures








I also let the mushroom spores grow in the tank,the one in the start of the thread.
Just to see what happens, here are some updated pictures.

HAHAHAHA!!! You now have a pet mushroom with a million tiny penises!

That is the coolest looking mushroom ever, I would take the T out and leave the tank how it is just for the shroom

iclazion wrote:


Sure. It actually demonstrates several things:

1> They eat plant material but generally avoid meat (based on your test with the roach).

2> They will eat mold if given the opportunity.

3> At least some molds are relatively non-toxic to them.

Heckuva experiment!