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I don't like the smell of this...

Since I finished my terrarium (yay me!), I started moving some of my plants in it. But as I was hapilly digging through my medium (50/50 peat moss/sand), I noticed that it...well, didn't smell so good.
There was an odor of rotten eggs coming from older media, I believe that would be sulfur produced by the decomposing material (in this case, the peat).
While I'm feeling right at home with this, as I love labs (and that includes smelly stuff better left to your imagination), I doubt it will make the day in my household.

Anybody with a solution?
 
I don't know how effective this is, but some people mix charcoal with their media to absorb the smells. Not the cooking kind, but the planting kind.
 
A foul smell like that is not a good sign. I'd replace your media with fresh if possible. Sour smells like that can mean problems. If I smell any substrate like that...out it goes!
 
The rotten egg smell is indeed a sulfur byproduct..hydrogen sulfide.. bacteria produce that in anerobic situations. Most likely the water level was too high in the terrarium. Only solution is to improve drainage, keep the water level to a bare minimum, or circulate it around somehow from top to bottom.
 
i believe that charcoal does not work. it does the same things as perlite, to lighten the soil. other than that, it does nada. charcoals activation time in which it actually does work is for 15 min, and that wont do much. Zongyi
 
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