Maintaining humidity while avoiding mold?

Ideas, techniques, problems and issues associated with keeping Leaf Cutting Ants in Captivity
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Turder
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Maintaining humidity while avoiding mold?

Post by Turder » Wed Oct 26, 2016 4:06 am

Hi all, I consider myself an advanced ant keeper but an absolute beginner at leafcutters! This is the first time I've had Acromyrmex and now I'm down to one queen. I currently have her in a test tube within a small (8"x3" or so) box. The box has two vents on top and I keep a small sponge inside to maintain the humidity.

I'm trying to think of a new, small setup for her but I've noticed even in this setup where the humidity is high enough for the fungus to look healthy, bad mold grows like crazy. I find 1" long hyphae covering the substrate I add only after a day or two. Does anyone have any examples of a small setup with good humidity maintenance?

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Acromyrmexbob
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Re: Maintaining humidity while avoiding mold?

Post by Acromyrmexbob » Wed Oct 26, 2016 8:27 am

Turder, it is important to understand the difference between humidity and moisture. Humidity is air borne moisture and does not generally cause mold to grow. When that moisture condenses back into water then there is mold. The trick is to setup a nest chamber with high humidity and as little liquid water as you can. So if you have condensation on your nest chamber walls then this will invariably lead to complications. Water condenses on any surface that is a lower temperature than the air inside. Because your colony is active, the air temperature inside your nest will be slightly higher than the air temperature outside the nest and hence the walls of your nest chamber will be cooler. This will likely cause condensation to form. Actually I am assuming that you have condensation on your nest box, perhaps you dont? I suggest you look through the various designs used by people here in the journals section and also the issues they have faced. There are some very good designs and some that have caused problems but the only two issues you need to control are temp and humidity. Steady temp and high humidity are essential. Have you measured the actual humidity in your nest box. If its 100%, then thats another possible reason why mold is growing, because water is being formed from such high levels.
I might actually have confused myself with that answer!

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Deansie26
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Re: Maintaining humidity while avoiding mold?

Post by Deansie26 » Wed Oct 26, 2016 11:10 am

Hello Turder and welcome to the forum, what substrate are you using?
I had to read it again and see you refer to food stuffs as substrate where as I would consider soil/ sand a substrate.

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Re: Maintaining humidity while avoiding mold?

Post by Turder » Wed Oct 26, 2016 5:47 pm

Deansie26 wrote:Hello Turder and welcome to the forum, what substrate are you using?
I had to read it again and see you refer to food stuffs as substrate where as I would consider soil/ sand a substrate.
Yes, I had seen that convention elsewhere though I'm not sure if it's correct. I'm fairly certain part (if not all) of my problem is some of the food I'm trying is wet, which is probably originating the mold.

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Deansie26
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Re: Maintaining humidity while avoiding mold?

Post by Deansie26 » Wed Oct 26, 2016 7:20 pm

I read it in a few American forums, interesting noticing differences.
What wet foods have you been trying? If anything I find the real humid conditions keep the leaves I give them fresh for longer and I never get mould. Only fruit and oatmeal has given me mould if left to long.
Are you giving them dry substrate or fresh? I've seen on the American forums that they provide what looks like dry leaves which is quite different to what we do here.

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Re: Maintaining humidity while avoiding mold?

Post by Turder » Wed Nov 02, 2016 12:43 am

Deansie26 wrote:I read it in a few American forums, interesting noticing differences.
What wet foods have you been trying? If anything I find the real humid conditions keep the leaves I give them fresh for longer and I never get mould. Only fruit and oatmeal has given me mould if left to long.
Are you giving them dry substrate or fresh? I've seen on the American forums that they provide what looks like dry leaves which is quite different to what we do here.
I was trying both fresh and dried. It seems that our Acryomyrmex versicolor live in the desert and primarily gather dried leaves and debris. I'm not sure if they cut fresh leaves like conventional leafcutters. That's mostly a guess based on my observations though.

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Acromyrmexbob
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Re: Maintaining humidity while avoiding mold?

Post by Acromyrmexbob » Sun Nov 06, 2016 11:18 pm

Am I correct in thinking that A. versicolor dig deeper fungal chambers than tropical species. I think this is because the fungus requires a similarly high humidity, even with a desert species. Deep nests cause lots of humidity to form in the chambers. I suspect that these leaf cutters work in an opposite way to tropical rainforest species in that they will try to limit the flow of air out of the nest. This air would carry all of the built up humidity. It may be that the ants are very good at avoiding losing humidity from the nest and hence they do not need to gather wet foods all of the time.

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