# Using filter foam as growing media



## Usedtobeanna (Jan 29, 2021)

I have had a vivarium set up for about 3 months using all best practices and ABG soil from Josh’s frogs. I apparently got a bag with the tree fern mold/fungus and I am going to have to tear it out and start over. 
Given I have heard a lot of issues with ABG purchased in the last 6 months, I am thinking of going with a filter foam soil-less base. Has anyone done one with success and has anyone seen any tutorials they would recommend?


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## Socratic Monologue (Apr 7, 2018)

Usedtobeanna said:


> tree fern mold/fungus


I haven't heard of this. Could you elaborate?


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## Usedtobeanna (Jan 29, 2021)

Socratic Monologue said:


> I haven't heard of this. Could you elaborate?


Little white specs everywhere. Mine isn’t too bad yet, but a lot of people have much worse going on. I am trying to reduce the humidity a bit to see if it will go away, but if not, it is recommended to rebuild. The Viv is growing great and the frogs are happy. Unfortunately, it kills off the clean up crew. I have loaded with so many springtails and isopods, but they are gone pretty quickly.








Anyway, I know some people have been not using soil at all. They grow moss right on the foam filter and put plants in it too. The tanks I have seen have been beautiful!


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## macg (Apr 19, 2018)

I'd be curious to hear from people with experience with this fungus. I suspect it will burn itself out like other fungi given time.


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## Chris S (Apr 12, 2016)

I have a few I started off "soiless" on (using Flourite/Matala), but they are all quite new, and I had trouble getting plants to get going so I caved and added a bit of ABG on the back and sides to help kick start some growth. I can't comment on long term success, and I probably wouldn't recommend using moss as a substrate. To keep it alive, that tank will have to stay pretty wet.


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## SimonL (Aug 29, 2020)

Tijl has put some nice tanks together using filter foam. They look very impressive and based upon his results I am also trying it in my latest build. So far my tank is looking nice although it’s too early to say if it will continue to flourish. 

Here is a build thread that Tijl put together on one of his builds 70x50x65cm Vivarium Build.


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## Usedtobeanna (Jan 29, 2021)

Also, even though I mentioned getting this at Josh’s frogs, I don’t think this is their fault.....it is something with the tree fern bark (all of my very limited knowledge on this is internet based.....I’m completely not an expert, so take it all with a grain of salt)!

I really hate the idea of tearing this down at all.










macg said:


> I'd be curious to hear from people with experience with this fungus. I suspect it will burn itself out like other fungi given time.


That is my hope. I figured I can get another tank set up. If it this burns itself out I don’t have to move them and i have a new Viv that needs new frogs!


Chris S said:


> I have a few I started off "soiless" on (using Flourite/Matala), but they are all quite new, and I had trouble getting plants to get going so I caved and added a bit of ABG on the back and sides to help kick start some growth. I can't comment on long term success, and I probably wouldn't recommend using moss as a substrate. To keep it alive, that tank will have to stay pretty wet.


Yes, I was meaning moss and tons of leaf litter!


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## Socratic Monologue (Apr 7, 2018)

There has been some discussion of this sort of fungus here in the past.









Is this harmful?


Hey all, I've noticed that these little yellow ball-type things have started popping up everywhere in my ABG substrate. Does anybody know if it's a threat? I don't have any frogs in the viv right now, just springtails. Thanks in advance for the help!




www.dendroboard.com













MUSHROOMS AND FUNGI


Hello everyone, I have a created gecko vivarium and noticed a few mushrooms pop up in the past. I know that this is normal but the whole drainage has been taken over. What should I do? All of the drainage was originally brown btw




www.dendroboard.com













Dendroboard







www.dendroboard.com





This is the most authoritative comment I've seen regarding it:



kimcmich said:


> That looks like it could be the mycelia of "yellow houseplant mushroom"_ Leucocoprinus birnbaumii. _It is common in all kinds of plant substrates and will boom where there is compost-y substrate to digest. It tends to thrive in warm and dry (for a fungus) conditions so you might want keep your substrate a little wetter for while. Either way, it will likely recede in a few weeks or months. If you're lucky you'll get some bright yellow toadstools before you never see it again...


I'm skeptical of the claim that it kills microfauna (because of confounding variables, and the lack of an experimental control), but could be convinced otherwise. @Ravage ?


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## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

Yeah, I would let this tank ride for a few months and see if it stabilizes. It just looks like normal new tank stuff going on to me. Focus on making sure that the conditions in the tank are correct for the frogs. If the tank is sealed (as has been a dangerous trend that seems to be making an ill-advised comeback), you are likely to see a lot more of this sort of thing. Shoot for the 60-80% humidity that is best for the frogs and I bet this plays out over time. I am also skeptical of the claims that the clean-up crew is impacted by this kind of thing. If anything, I would expect them to eat it... If you have lost your clean-up crew for sure (they can be difficult to see sometimes), then there may be something else going on in the tank.

Mark


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## Socratic Monologue (Apr 7, 2018)

So I just took a reptile room tour. I have a few vivs with a white ball fungus that looks like that in the photo (and in photos in the threads I linked). I'll bet no one has identified this fungus conclusively, and most keepers sure couldn't do so, so we might all be talking about a different organism.

In a 18 x 18 growout viv, there is a minimal but noticable amount in the ABG. I dug and found many isopods (dwarf white and dwarf purple).

In a 12 x 12 growout viv, there is no ball fungus in the ABG, but there is on some of the leaf litter and a fair amount on a piece of ghostwood (that has been in the viv for over a year) that seems to be forming mushrooms. I'll see if they form caps later or tomorrow.

In my InSitus, which are only a few months old, and contain no ABG, there is this sort of fungus on some of the leaf litter. Because those vivs have the lowest predator load of any of my vivs (50 points for larger vivs!) there are a lot of springtails in evidence. I usually have a hard time finding springs in any of my vivs.

This fungus grows best in my mourning gecko viv, which has ABG with no drainage layer, and a high bioload. There aren't any microfauna in there likely because the MGs wipe them out, which is possibly why the fungus grows so well (also the irregular substrate moisture level might play a role in both the fungus and the lack of microfauna).

I had a 18 x 18 crested gecko viv that I broke down some months ago -- it had coco chunk substrate only and grew this ball fungus well. _Porcellionides pruinosus_ thrived in that viv.

So, in my own collection, I can find no reliable association between the ball fungus that I have and ABG (some of my ABG has soft (New Zealand 'Fernwood') tree fern, some hard tree fern, and the latest builds have some of both), and no association between the fungus and microfauna population generally.


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## Ravage (Feb 5, 2016)

It's kind of hard to see the structure of your pest from the pictures, but the scale seems to indicate that the "balls" are quite small. That makes me think that this may be a slime mold (which is not really a fungus at all, but an amoeba-like creature) The balls would be the reproductive apparatus- sporocarps. Often they are wildly colored, but white is a common, if drab hue. If this is the case, they are just feeding on organics on your fern tree bark, and will go away when the food source is used up. Were it a fungus, like the flowerpot dapperling (Leucocoprinus birnbaumii), there would be little obvious mycellia because that would be in the soil- Until you popped out one of the very large and showy mushrooms, that is. If there is mycelium present it should be more prominent than the ball-like structures and form a cottony web over everything. The "slime part of the slime mold can be either very noticable, or not noticeable at all, depending on conditions. Slime molds move, often a lot. Try looking at it with a blacklight if you have one. Some fluoresce, some don't, but if they do you'll see the weblike structure of the critter itself and not just the spore bodies.
File it all under harmless. Springtails might not eat slime molds, but they shouldn't last for very long in any case. 
Here's a slime mold picture:


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