The Three Molds

My containers were supposed to all be for my Physarum, but other molds have been settling in. It has gotten to the point where I own self-sustaining ecosystems, with a base of Rolled Oats. These are them:

Slime Mold- Physarum Polycephalum

Black Bread Mold - Rhizopus Stolonifer

Blue Mold - Penicillium Expansum

They are competing for the oats, like 3 armies, competing for a resource. I did a topic last year focused only on the physarum, but now I find them all equally interesting. I also have a few invertebrate populations establishing themselves in the boxes.

The first to start reproducing was the wood louse. This actually began months ago, but I did not get around to writing about them. Also called sow bugs and armadillo bugs, These little guys are crustaceans that do not care at all about what it is, if it will feed them, they will eat it. this makes wood lice some of the hardiest invertebrates ever, and explains my ease at culturing them.

Springtails were something that just showed up one day, and joined the wood lice, doubling my cleaning crew. The picture above shows snow fleas, not the species I am referring to, But i do not have any photos of the kind of spring tail that I have.

The next one would be the fungus gnats. at first, I only saw their larva, white masses of little worms, eating the oats and mold. They were really gross, and i did not expect them to go into metamorphosis. Now, a fungus gnat or 2 will fly out of the box every time I open it. I also see them scuttling around and being chased by the Redback Salamander. I can infer that when the adult gnats are trapped in the box after metamorphosis, they lay eggs and mate, otherwise, there wouldn't be another generation of larva.

Soon after the fungus gnats, I began spotting clusters of white dots surrounding organic matter. they were clearly grain mites. They start off as a tiny dot and then inflate like a balloon from all the fat and eggs in them, and they reproduce like a wildfire. These are common pests to flour mills, grocery stores, processing mills, and broken refrigerators.

The giant photo below, taken on February 4th pretty much shows it all.

I was really impressed myself with this photo. It includes all 3 molds, my Redback Salamander, Grain Mites, and Fungus Gnat Larva. This is the most colorful and bio-diverse the setup has ever been and I am going to try and keep it that way. It is probably due to darkness, humidity and neglect. This may sound counter-intuitive but, when I am less involved with the setup, it tends to do better. Take Maple, my salamander for example. He went 4 months without a single human provided meal.

Meanwhile, my other Physarum creates fruiting bodies. This is caused by starvation to try to get it's genes to an area with more food. each spore is capable of becoming a new physarum. This makes sense as I have been feeding it much less oats lately. This fruiting body forest is in much better shape than the one that occurred a month ago.