[Nonsequiteur]

Does anyone else have a problem with mold in their vivs? I have plenty of cleanup crew in all of my vivs, but a couple of them still put off a lot of mold smell. There isn't an overgrowth that I can see, it's just the smell. My ex wife has to live with me for the foreseeable future and she is extremely sensitive to mold and it is affecting her fairly severely. I am getting ready to rebuild several of my vivs, to include the suspected contaminated ones, would I be better off replacing the substrate with matala or something else to prevent future regrowth of mold? I plan on getting a UV room filter to hopefully kill off any airborne mold, but I'm just trying to plan out what my best course of action to take for fixing this going forward with the new vivs.

 

[Gastrotheca]

What is your substrate made of? A poorly-draining substrate could be the culprit for the mold smell. If your substrate does not drain well, the presence of constant moisture and flow of water to the drainage layer can result in an anaerobic media. This leads me to the next question, do you have a drainage layer?
It would also help if you can post pics of the vivariums so we can see what the conditions are like.

Good luck!


Gastrotheca
_
Crested Gecko 0.2.0

 

[Nonsequiteur]

I'm using commercial abg mix and my drainage layer consists of egg crate light diffuser wrapped in weed cloth and elevated with segments of pvc pipe. My weed cloth might be too water tight, I've got a couple others I wrapped in window screen that don't seem to be as saturated, but I've also used it in a couple more that don't have the saturation problem. In the most humid viv I have lexan rather than the screen lid, though I have two, 2.5" screen vents drilled through. I'm at work at the moment, won't be able to take pictures until tomorrow.

 

[Socratic Monologue]

In the most humid viv I have lexan rather than the screen lid, though I have two, 2.5" screen vents drilled through.

That's about 10 sq inches, which is equal to a strip 1" wide on a 12 x 12 viv, about 1/2 inch on a 18 x 18 viv, which is less than I've personally ever run. Increasing ventilation would be my first thought in dealing with excess mold. Misting less and less frequently might help, too.

I wouldn't consider Matala to be a substrate material (it doesn't retain water, for one thing), though it makes a fine drainage layer.