Advice needed: Molding on reptibark?

Hbewsher

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Hello all, I need some advice...

Over the weekend I got my 6 month old cherry head set up in an AP T8. I have T8 uvb tubes the length of the enclosure, and at one end a CHE on a thermostat which is set to 95 degrees. The "basking spot" is 93-95 degrees, the cool end is 81-83 degrees, and the humidity has been solidly in the mid 70s to mid 80s.

My concern, the substrate, is about an inch of coco peat, and topped with a layer of zilla reptibark. The coco peat came in bricks, which I reconstituted, and the reptibark I also soaked/rinsed before putting it in.

The enclosure has been set up for 2 days, and I've put my baby in yesterday. While slightly more shy than usual due to the environmental changes, "he" seems just fine, eating, drinking, exlporing, hiding, sleeping etc. This morning while feeding and soaking, I noticed a spot of what looked like mold near his food dish. It was grayer than the normal spot of mold I see on a small bit of dropped food, and looked exactly like dryer lint. When I went to pick it out, I saw more of it.. And it seems to have grown along the surface of the reptibark pretty uniformly in some areas. It is not thick, but just a thin, hard to notice patch of mold/fungus. If I were to guess it may be covering 35% - 40% of the surface area of the repitbark floor. Not all in one place but in patches the size of my palm or hand.

Has anyine come across this before? Is this dangerous to my tort? Should I do a substrate change? Until now he has been on long fibered spagnum moss. If I do need to change it, what should I use? I was under the impression that repitbark/orchid bark along with some type of coco peat/organic topsoil was an ideal mix to use for a humidity loving species like mine.

Thank you in advance for any help or advice!
 

Hbewsher

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I should also add: the first night I had the enclosure put together, the humidity was only in the low 60s, so twice I misted the surface of the substrate so as to increase the humidity before adding my tort.
 

vladimir

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Can you post some pictures showing what it looked like? I have not seen this before. I'm curious as well
 

Hbewsher

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I cleaned the biggest spots up before I thought to take a picture. One is quite zoomed in, otherwise it's hard to see.
 

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vladimir

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Strange - I don't think I've seen that before with Reptibark. I wonder if anyone else has?
 

Hbewsher

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After searching the forum a bit, I am afraid I got the layer of reptibark on the surface too wet?
 

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