Ants won't leave moldy test tube

[PAants]

Just posting to see if anyone has any other suggestions for this situation. I'm having a similar issue with a colony of Camponotus. They have an Ant Tower attached, but won't move into it, and the cotton in their two water tubes has turned almost completely black. It's occurred to me to pull the tubes out and basically dump them out into the tower, but I don't want to do something that drastic unless they're really in danger from the mold.

That's what happened with my queens, the black mold, and I'm also from PA. Something in the air? The weather? I still haven't figured out why this happened, but it killed one of my colonies. I was able to get my ants to move just by exposing their tube to natural light and covering the new tube, but until this point they'd been kept in a dark drawer. I imagine the contrast may have something to do? I will say, it took two weeks for my last colony to move. I wouldn't dump them, though. One, you might injure or even kill the queen. Two, what's to keep mold from dumping into your shiny new set-up? Generally, unless they're obviously doing poorly, I would trust the ants know what they're doing and will move when the time is right.

Just wanted to post an update. After hibernating my ants, they warmed up to the tower quite a bit. They still won't leave their main tube, but they spend more time in the tower and I was able to replace the secondary tube with a fresh one, and they seem to be doing well.