My newish Warm terrarium - Orchid Board

tropterrarium · #1 12-22-2012, 11:52 PM

Greetings.

Here is my newish warm terrarium, currently doubling as a festivus pole. Some specs:
20x36x60" = ~180 gals. Temp range 65-95F, RH 65-75% minimum target. Mainly for Oberonia.

Set-up. Tank is custom job from Protean terrarium, which I do NOT recommend due to massive delays and lack of communication. All non-tempered glass. Access through sliding panel on right. Drilled additional holes in the bottom aluminum rail so that misting water can drain out of rail into tank (and not on my wood floor).

Two venting slits under sliding panel and on top. The top panel is partially closed with plastic wrap. Once I figure out how much it needs to be open to maintain adequate temperature and humidity, I will find something better.

Water reservoir (~4 gals) in back left about 5" tall, siliconed in myself. Water reservoir and main compartment have drains with ball valves (Marine depot). Drilled holes myself, also through stand I made.

Water feature with a small fountain pump that overflows the hollow cork tube (I think from FirstRay) in the back left. The water hose is wedged into the cork cube with a piece of styrofoam, the whole thing liberally sealed with silicone. The cork tube hangs from the side glass with a metal screw-washer-nut going through glass. Was first worried it would crack the glass, but so far so good

. A floating ultrasonic fogger sits in the water basin.

Two 4" fans are hidden in foam-board tubing, further camouflaged with bark. one along the backside of the terrarium, blowing over water feature, other one front center blowing upwards. 2 smaller 2.5" fans at the top blowing down.

Bottom of tank has about 1" styrofoam mat to help distribute weight of branches. Then expanded clay. Just installed some soil warming coils (20' @200W) in the expanded clay and along the backside of some branches. Got it from a horticultural supply house. For same length, the horticultural coils have higher wattage (= heat output) than what is sold for terraria.

Additional aquarium heaters installed under vertical fan, and in duct of horizontal fan. Seems to work!

Misting with Mistking system and 7 nozzels, dripzip, about 5 gal water reservoir in bottom of stand, water reservoir slides out on drawer rollers.

Misters are attached to two aluminum L-profiles, that I drilled every 1 cm or so. The L-profiles are glued to the glass with some heavy glue, the nozzles and lines attached with zip-ties.

Controls with DigitalAquatics HerpKeeper with PC4 (switched strip outlet), MLC (moonlight controller with 3 LED lights), AP1 (Temp RH sensor). Adjusts day/night temperature fluctuation, runs misters = rain every day, and adjusts RH in two stages with water feature and fogger.

Initially, I thought I would control heat with water heater in the water compartment in the tank, and blow air over it. Worked great in my other tank. Here, humidity was too high all the time, with water condensing on plants (not good!). Also at night, the tank did not cool sufficiently due to residual heat capacity in water reservoir. Therefore, the water feature and fogger is only used for humidity control, heating is done via air heating.

Lights: ATI dimmable 6x 36", with continuous up and down dimming over course of day to simulate natural light changes over course of day. SWEET! ATI is on a UPS to protect against brown-outs and short black-outs. The ATI-timer resets after any power interruption, and power glitches re surprisingly common. The HerpKeeper is very resilient, resets itself after power outage, and starts up correctly.

Branches are Manzanita (Arctostaphylos sp.: reddish heavy), and Orange (Citrus: grey, light weight).

Current plants: Oberonia setifera (2x in spike), O. toppingii, O. sp. "iridifolia", O. sp. (in spike), O. miniata, O. cavaleriei (aka "myosurus"), Notylia barkeri, Bulbophyllum virginalis, B. sikkimense, Jaquinelia leucomelata (finally flowered after 3 years!), Ornithocephalus in flower, Lockhartia lunifera from keiki in GH, Ludisia discolor (cutting), Leptotes pohlitinocoi (in bud). Still quite a bit of space :-)

Let me know what you think. Thanks!

P.S. Always lookin' for more Oberonia

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kevin1217 · #2 12-23-2012, 08:38 PM

Looks great!

tropterrarium · #3 12-23-2012, 10:42 PM

Thanks Kevin!

The heating cord now gets it up to 75F during the daytime, so that seems to work.

Paul Mc · #4 12-24-2012, 09:31 AM

Sweet!!!!

tropterrarium · #5 12-24-2012, 12:18 PM

Thanks PaulMc!
Will upload a few pictures of plants later. Given the size of the tank, they are a bit small in the image.

isurus79 · #6 01-01-2013, 09:06 PM

Looks pretty good!

stylingpat · #7 03-20-2013, 12:25 PM

Was it a big project to put the lights on a timed-auto dimmer?

tropterrarium · #8 03-20-2013, 03:12 PM

Hy Stylingpat,

The dimmer-timer is integrated into the ATI fixture. Pretty easy to set it up with a 5 button interface and the LCD screen.
see this link

Island Girl · #9 05-11-2013, 12:56 AM

That set-up is awesome!!! Have u ever thought about doing one of those foam type backgrounds, that u mold, and cover with bark, and coir, and stuff or make look like a rock wall? (like what ppl do for aquariums, or dart frog Vivariums?) That's really cool about the lights too... Wish I could do that someday

How is everything growing now? Added anything? Got any recent pics? (sorry for all the questions, I really do like this setup u have! Lol)

tropterrarium · #10 05-11-2013, 02:21 AM

Hi Mary,

thanks for the feedback, glad you like it. I have been thinking about backdrops for both my tanks, but decided against them. For the 90 gal formerly intermediate, now cool, tank, it is in window alcove, and I want to be able to see through the "jungle" out the window.

For the 180 gal warm terrarium, it is very tall (5') so light fall-off is quite steep. The white walls on two sides (terrarium is in a corner) help reflecting light back into the terrarium so keep the lower portions brighter. A drip wall or similar would absorb more light.

Things are quite stable now. I cut rain/misting to 3 x week, fertilize on a "dry" day, and do a Epsom salt rinse one "dry" day, so sort of 5 waterings a week. Humidity stays at 75-80%.

Additions, oh yes! Hippeophyllum sp. Burma, H. sp., Oberonia leytenis (currently in spike), O. rufilabris (obtained as "setigera" "toppingii" "antrhopophora" sp.: some flowering, some in spike), O. miniata, O. dissitiflora, O. lycopodioides, O. disticha, O. seidenfadenii, O. sp. Philippines, O. acaulis, 4 Notylia species (one in spike). Notylia barkeri is flowering right now, and has grown roots onto the citrus, so can't take it out anymore. So it's filling up. Redlands show is coming up and I got a number or pre-orders in :-)

Just got an O. "aurea" in the mail, turned out to be O. cavaleriei! Quite a bad mis-ID, but so it goest with Oberonia. The O. "topping" turned out to be a Hippeophyllum sp. (!) and the O. "anthropophora" was O. rufilabris (that one is not that bad, except that I already have about 15 O. rufilabris, but no true anthropophora).

Pictures? Yes, promised them before, have to get the camera back out. My bad.