This may be of help to the new peeps...
We all know to keep our springtail cultures seperate from the FF cultures due to mites walking over to them, so...
I keep my springtail cultures in the regular 32oz standard FF cups on charcoal with @ an inch of water. I wanted to have a TINY bit of ventilation since I go away for a couple weeks at a time and that way the Co2 build up wouldn't kill the colony.
I punch 4 TINY holes with a craft punch (smallest size) and 2 horrible things happened.
1. The holes were near the top (if that matters) and enough air movement in the room apparently caused enough evaporation to make the culture on the dry side
2. WORST of all.....uneaten and/or escaped FF from the vivs walked onto the cultures and found the tiny hole and entered the spring cultures. A dry winter basement must have made the watery cultures very inviting as usually the "feral" FF will actually make there way BACK into the vivs (and certain froggy doom) in thier quest for moisture.
As we also know, the FF are usually carrrying grain mites on their bodies and thus - infected charcoal / spring cultures.
Not THAT big a deal, as the charcoal can be reused but the spring production suffered and it was a rookie mistake.
Though I would share that.....
Mites in the Springtail cultures.
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