

Native soil taken from the wild will be riddled, so I’d stay clear. Soil – Some soils come sterile packed (so they’re sure to be safe), but many soil mixes are likely to contain spores.Spores can lay dormant for long periods and spread through the air to form new colonies. Sadly, mold is one of those things that’s hard to eliminate completely because it reproduces via microscopic spores. Mold is a natural phenomenon it’s everywhere.Īll it needs to flourish is a warm, moist environment with plenty of organic matter to feed on, in other words… a terrarium. It shows up to annoy you every time you make something nice, but if you give it some air and ignore it long enough, it’ll often go away on its own eventually. Mold is a somewhat frequent reality in the terrarium hobby, but thankfully it’s more of a nuisance than a problem. In my terrariums, I see mold most often on driftwood branches, and that’s totally normal. They can even feed on surfaces like plastics if a biofilm (bacterial layer) is present. Molds feed on sugars and other moist organic matter. However, you can still get a moldy terrarium with healthy plants. So, as long as your plants are healthy, mold shouldn’t pose much risk to them.

Terrarium mushrooms actually fall into this category, too they’d all generally feed on fallen leaves and deceased plants in the wild. Meaning they are involved in the processing of decayed organic matter. Mold is a type of fungus, and fungi are saprotrophic. But a little bit of fuzz is not a serious threat. I mean, if it starts to take over the whole terrarium, then it becomes more of a problem. Generally speaking, mold doesn’t affect healthy plants.
