Found something around my cultures...

[awelcome]

I have my FF and springtail cultures in my under-stairs closet on a shelf. I have mite paper on that shelf and nothing touches. Tonight I went to move things around a bit and found a rogue couple of flies outside the containers... not a good sign lol. So I started poking around more trying to figure out how the heck they got out (which I am baffled by honestly) and when I did I found a sort of powdery substance around the container for my springtails. It was like it was all around the edges in the rectangular shape on the fly paper. It wiped up like cocoa powder..... and upon inspection really closely it didn't appear to be moving (if it were mites or something) but maybe I just couldn't see. I have seen mites on my older fly culture lids (purchased) and was able to see them moving, and this didn't quite seem the same and I even tried to look with a magnifying glass but again didn't see any movement. I also looked verly closely at the lids of the FF cultures and didn't see anything on top like I did on the others.

[DigitalPunk]

Without a Picture it will be hard to venture a guess as to what it was.

[awelcome]

I had already cleaned it all up, but if I see it again I will try to snap a pic.

[awelcome]

hmm somehow my post went on wrong thread.

[awelcome]

ok, so there was a little at one corner of the springtail container again today. I got a few pics, but it's hard to see still. I also will share a couple pics of how I store things.... I know I said nothing touches but I forgot about the second container sitting on top of the one... it just has the dirt left over from the culture in it basically and I was waiting to make sure there weren't any springs I missed hatching or something. I actually need to clean that out and get rid of it now. As you can see it looks a lot like a fine substance or powder sprinkled around the edge of where the box sits.

[awelcome]

My culture is finally booming for sure... yay! I can see them crawling and hopping all over. So I have been adding them to my viv once in a while. I am, however, still seeing this brown stuff around the culture every day. I wipe it up each day, but it's always back the next. I have inspected the tissue each time and never see anything moving, but I am not ruling out some sort of mite thing. I just don't know what else it could be?! It hasn't seemed to harm my culture, and my fly cultures are still clear looking on the containers that I can see and the brown stuff is never around those. Any thoughts?

[flybyferns]

supplements ?

[awelcome]

the supplements are in their containers in a box and aren't brown... not sure it could be that.