how do you stop fungus growing on you wood mounts?

[HotPot]

I sterilized my bark by boiling for 3 hours then mounted my orchid. I spray the bark every morning but after a few days I see some white spots of fungus - should I be spraying with some sort of anitfungus also? How do you guys stop fungus growing on bark that is wet a lot of the time?

[SarinahL]

Thanks for posting this, I just threw out 2 mounts (minus orchis!) last week with the same problem.

Funnily enough I don't have this problem with the wood I bought from the petstore. Since those are meant for humid terraria I suppose they treated the wood. Question is, with what??

[Mira-Claude]

I think the secret is to totally let it dry.
At least it's what I do and it never went white with fungus.
For something that I keep always wet I use another media like hydroton and sometime sphag but I change it often.

[kmarch]

A little bit of mold on the bark is not necessarily a bad thing. It usually does not harm the orchids and is a normal part of the breaking down of the organic material. There is at least some mold on nearly every mount and in nearly all bark mixes. Unless you have mold allergies or there is another cause for alarm I wouldn't worry too much about it. Or you could just apply a fungicide.

[FLBob]

You might think about changing the way you water your mounts. Instead of misting or wetting daily, you might look at switching to a weekly drenching. The mold won't do as well with prolonged periods of dry. Most epiphytic orchid are well adapted to withstand drying conditions.

[HotPot]

I was wondering if you guys got it or not and if it was anything to worry about - it seems not. I might spray the bark with some cinnamon spray once a week anyways. Luckily it's not showing on the rough side of the bark but the back smooth side that no-one sees.