Is this mushroom harmful?
 

I just got this orchid (picture 1) the other day from a professor at my university. (I can't remember the name of it) and he said it would be a good terrarium orchid.

I just started two terrariums out of glass jars (about 8" in diameter) using some mulch and moss I collected outside. I placed the pot with the orchid inside the terrarium temporarily, since I wanted to keep it humid before I converted the terrarium to all-sphagnum moss.

Well, today I noticed this mushroom (picture 2..sorry it's blurry) growing inside the other terrarium, where I have a tiny maidenhair fern growing. It was a tiny mushroom (I removed it and a second one I found) only about 1/2" high, but I'm now worried that perhaps the orchid will grow mushrooms in the pot, and I want to know if those mushrooms are bad for it. Would they be bad for the fern?

I also noticed a few tiny snails (1 mm with spiral shells) in the fern's jar. Are these harmful too? I'm thinking of just throwing all the contents of both jars out and starting anew, but I wanted to check here first to see if there was any reason not to. I'm definitely going to sterilize the jar for the orchid and buy moss for it, but I want to know if I should keep the wild moss I collected in the jar with the fern and just leave it alone, despite the mushrooms.

Advice?

Could your Jewel Orchid be the species Macodes petola?

I'm not an expert on fungus or mycology, but if it isn't killing your plants or harming it, then it is probably helping it grow.

It's probably acting like a mycorrhizal symbiont in the fern's roots.

Mycorrhiza - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The mushroom you've posted a picture of is most likely in the phylum Basidiomycota. The underside of it where the gills are are where the spores are formed.

Basidiomycota - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

What you're seeing is the fruiting body or basidiocarp (in the case of fungi in the phylum Basidiomycota).

The non-fruiting part of the fungus is microscopic and forms a web of mycelia in the humus.

Mycelium: the mass of hyphae that form the vegetative part of a fungus - (mycelia is the plural form of the word mycelium)

Hypha: (in a fungus) one of the threadlike elements of the mycelium - (hyphae is the plural form of the word hypha)

The definitions of hypha and mycelium are from Dictionary.com.

The snails on the other hand I don't know too much about. They could eat parts of the plant. It depends on the species.

I don't see a need to throw out the jar with a mushroom in it. Any naturally planted terrarium / vivarium will go through a high nutrient cycle upon start up. Just like a fishtank does as the "miniature eco-system" inside the small environment equalizes itself.

I had a variety of mushroom species come and go in my Anoles vivarum. Now they never come and I sort of miss seeing them pop up every so often. I had fat orange hairy ones, tiny white ones, some tall skinny blue looking ones... Something that looked like a whitish clear sea fan grew all over the glass at an alarming pace for a few days a couple years ago and never saw it again. Once the bulk of the available nutrients are gone so too should be the fungi and molds. In the mean time I say enjoy the show! :)

If you're old enough to buy beer, put some in a bottle cap and put it in your tank. Snails (and slugs) drink the beer and die. Certain snails can eat on good plants so it's OK to be ruthless with them. In the case of a planted aquarium the snails known popularly as Malaysian Trumpet Snails (these look like tiny white and brown unicorn horns up to 1" long) are great detrivores and a real asset to have. But I don't like Ramshorn Snails (the curly shelled ones) on land or in water, as they can do some damage to your good plants. I've never tried to see if MTS can be kept in a moist non-aquatic environment, would be cool to have some in a terrarium setting to work the soil processing the dead leaves and so on like they do in a planted aquarium.

I agree, the fungi is not much of an issue. The snails will devatsate the plants.