Pangea Hatch Boil Warning

[Lord Sorril]

I reused substrate for three clutches and all three ended up having pretty severe mold. Two have already died (they were in the same egg bin from last post) and now a third that's meant to hatch this week has several eggs covered in the same black mold. It's just a very very frustrating time for me.

Ahhh two clutches dead. I would be super upset too.

If I thought hard enough about it I could give you schematics to build a Walter White style microbiology setup in your basement. Of course that is a bit of overkill, and by the time you were done you would have spent an epic level of effort. It would easier to send a sample of the mold that is causing you issues to a laboratory then they could ID it using their equipment. IDEXX charges my BioPharma $400/sample to do that-they would probably charge you more. Not sure if there is any smaller private options...I have never checked.

The way I see it: Three clutches and all three with mold narrows down your options considerably:
-The substrate is contaminated. (solution: use different substrate)
-The water is contaminated. (solution: use only distilled water)
-The incubation housing is contaminated. (solution: disinfect the housing prior to use with 1:9 Sodium Hypochlorite (Liquid Bleach):Regular Water
-The eggs are contaminated by the environment immediately when laid. (solution: ?)
-Your hands are contaminated. (solution: put on latex gloves and then coat hands in 70% Isopropyl alcohol and let them air dry prior to handling eggs)
-Incubation failed and the eggs died as a result. (solution: review incubation design)

The benefit of knowing the identification of the mold is that you can figure out exactly where it came from and how to prevent/destroy it.