Trichoglottis pusilla in terrarium? - Orchid Board

Fishkeeper · #1 04-10-2021, 01:20 PM

I'm trying to research these amazing little guys. Some sources say to water them less in the winter, some don't mention it. Anyone know if these guys will do well as terrarium plants, with the same watering year-round? I could stop fertilizing in winter if it wanted, but if I got one, it would go in a moist terrarium with an automatic mister.

I see they don't like to be kept quite as moist as some other small orchids. Any idea if one would do well on a mount with little to no moss and daily misting?

These are just stunning. I'm surprised everyone doesn't have one. The little stripes!

wisdomseeker · #2 04-11-2021, 01:02 PM

Nice little orchid that doesn't require much space. I have grown these successfully in terrariums. Kept on the warm side (76-84F) year round, RH around 70% (or better), bright artificial light, gentle air circulation, mounted on tree fern with LF sphagnum.

Watered (and lightly fertilized) on a regular schedule. Mounts remained moist with slight drying between watering. Watering is done by hand in my set-ups. I do not use automatic misting/watering systems. I'll see if I can dig up some pictures of my T. pusilla along with their flowers (and I'll try to post pics if I can find them).

A slow grower for me. Acquired mine as seedlings. Took about a good year just to produce a few new leafs, and a couple of years to fully mature. Flowers lasted 2-3 weeks before fading away. My sense of smell is not the best, but the flowers were fragrant... a sweet fragrance that is hard to describe and very noticeable about a week-in after flowers were fully open.

Jmbaum · #3 04-11-2021, 01:14 PM

Trichoglottis pusilla looks like a great choice tempted to add that in mine. I have a few plants that don't want to be wet all the time. I just keep them higher up. Monopodials are even less of a worry since they is no water between dense pseudobulbs. My terrarium is never below 95% RH. I'd just be mindful of the not pouring water into the leaf folds.

Fishkeeper · #4 04-12-2021, 12:11 AM

If I can find one, I'll have to give it a try. The little flowers are just so nice! And I'm not seeing anything that calls it abnormally delicate. Not one of the ones that keels over and dies at the slightest provocation.

How long would it take to be reasonably confident that one of these (or, really, any micro-mini) liked the conditions it was in? Say, if it still has healthy roots and leaves after two or three months, can I assume it likes the amount of water? I know figuring out growth and blooming can take way longer, but I'm more interested in the timeline for "alright, this orchid probably isn't going to become unhealthy in these conditions".

Jmbaum · #5 04-12-2021, 12:40 AM

My Malaxis started being unhappy with the amount of water and how much I was running the mister, early on, but I didn’t understand since it was new setup. I didn’t have the hygrometer yet or a strong enough fan. I always thought the issue was going to be keeping it humid. Just look out for rot potential for first month or so. I only lost that one orchid. the epiphytes were far more forgiving while I adjust and tried to refine. None of them did badly, and always grew, it was really about finding how each did best.

---------- Post added at 11:40 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:28 PM ----------

So in short, your going to see a quicker reaction from species with thinner leaves, more susceptible to rot, thirst and burn. I have always know succulent orchids to die slowly, so you’ll have plenty of opportunity to do well for them. Just keep making small adjustments. Even now I still make small adjustments when I do maintenance, sometimes I move plants, adjust light ect.

wisdomseeker · #6 04-12-2021, 10:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fishkeeper

How long would it take to be reasonably confident that one of these (or, really, any micro-mini) liked the conditions it was in? Say, if it still has healthy roots and leaves after two or three months, can I assume it likes the amount of water? I know figuring out growth and blooming can take way longer, but I'm more interested in the timeline for "alright, this orchid probably isn't going to become unhealthy in these conditions".

Without knowing your terrarium & growing conditions it's difficult for to provide any input from my end, except for what has worked for me with this orchid.

As far as timelines for "alright"... I would give it a good 6 months of observation (for obvious signs of overall health and growth). Even when homework/research is done for growing a particular plant, sometimes you just have to go for it and tweak your growing conditions (light, water, temperature, etc.) and continue observing if things start going south.

My terrarium set-ups are basically utilitarian. Glass, light, fan, and orchids. I do exert time to do basic maintenance, and water by hand. It allows more control (for me personally) and provides my plants with what they need to be happy. Of course the "easy button" (automation) works for many. Been there and done that. An expensive lesson for me, but none the less, I have more control & less headaches with the manual labor (once again, that's just me personally).

All of my mounted orchids can be easily re-positioned within my set-ups. This comes in handy because I can not only relocate mounts easily, it also allows me to move closer to the light source or further away from the light source. It especially helps when growing a new orchid I have never tried before (easy to adjust while I'm in the 'trial & error' learning curve0.

Still have not found my pictures of T. pusilla (I will have to do a deep dive into my files when I have more time). One of the things I do to regulate humidity is keeping a bed of sphagnum in the bottom of my set-ups. Grows in a 2" deep tray filled with distilled H2O. Depends on a particular set-up where I mount a fan.

This one has a fan mounted near the bottom. It provides good gentle air circulation throughout, and also helps evaporate the water in the tray (helps maintain humidity levels ~ RH stays in the 70% range during the day, and in the mid 90% at night ~ lights and fan are connected to the same timer, so when lights are out, fan is off). From my experience, T. pusilla is a slow grower and enjoys bright light.

Jmbaum · #7 04-12-2021, 11:30 AM

Totally agree with wisdom seeker, really the joy of having a terrarium is really having a chance to observe. There is so much to wonderment to be had spending 30min or an hour to really study what’s happening through the glass. Plants are slow moving animals essentially.

You’ll find what works for you.

My lights are on timer for solid 12hrs, I use anthocyanin production as my guide and lean heavily in favor of it so long as the plant doesn’t show ill effects.
Fan is 24 hours
Fogger 1-2 hours daily

Distilled water only:
2 in water on about half bottom
(50 watt heater maintains > 73degrees)
Plants hand watered every second or 3rd day in two passes to ensure saturation.
RH 95-100

Fishkeeper · #8 04-12-2021, 02:11 PM

I'm going with an automatic mister because I have chronic fatigue issues, and difficulty keeping up with frequent/daily tasks long-term. I do enjoy watering my plants (miscellaneous houseplants), and there's definitely something satisfying about misting a terrarium. But I really don't want to have a bunch of things die again because I get hit with a bad batch of circumstances and don't have the spoons to water things.

I don't have the terrarium set up yet, I'm researching while things are in the mail, so I don't have exact growing conditions. I'm aiming for intermediate/warm temps (we'll see where things end up falling), high humidity, generally a moist environment, and... whatever light level winds up working, I'm getting an adjustable fixture. Probably moderate light with shaded areas, micro-minis don't seem to like high light.
Definitely a fan on constantly for circulation, but only to move the internal air around. This is going to be a Zilla terrarium, which has a vent low across the front, and a screen top. I'll probably cover most of the screen top, but not all of it.

I still have to figure out what to do with the bottom. I definitely want a couple pockets of soil for terrestrial plants (micro begonias, anyone?), and some areas of leaf litter. I might just have an open pool of water across some of the bottom, if I can get it to look nice. I don't think sphagnum moss would like to be grown next to soil, unfortunately, it's fussy about nutrients. Maybe I can get it to grow up on some rocks? I do want to try for a moss-covered rock with some pinguiculas (butterworts- little rosette carnivorous plants, amazing gnat-eaters), like how they grow in the wild.

I'm not really looking for specific advice, since I don't yet have specific conditions set up. I'm mostly trying to figure out if this is a plant that can do well with daily misting and no rest period. If so, I can fiddle with lighting, positioning, and amount of moisture retention until I get it happy. If not, it would probably never be happy in this setup. But it sounds like it's worth a try- thanks for the advice!

I do have some experience with slow adjustments and observing things. Aside from having grown orchids and other things in the past, I have a small reef tank right now. I've set it up so that it only needs feeding every few days, as the only fish are very, very small, and are fed entirely off of the crustaceans they can catch. The corals and hermit crabs don't mind being fed on an intermittent and uneven schedule, as long as it averages out. The hermits have other things to eat, algae and gunk, and the corals don't need much food at all. They just grow best with food.
Corals and orchids have some similarities. They both take a while to react to things, and do best with slow changes. There's a really unfortunate thing that corals can do, and I wonder if orchids do as well, which is delayed reaction. If you have, say, a deficiency in some nutrient, it can take corals two or three weeks to start showing signs of it. So you have to figure out what happened two or three weeks ago to upset them. And some corals don't show that something is wrong until they're in serious distress. Then, when you fix the problem, it can take another two or three weeks for the solution to sink in as well. If a coral is in bad enough shape, it can die in that time, even if conditions are now perfect. They're just kinda lagging. And if you want slow animals, well, that's what a coral is.
At least with orchids, we don't tend to bring in rocks from the outside that can have unknown pests. Live rock (rock that's been in the ocean for a few years to get covered in creatures) is an important part of a reef tank, because it brings in beneficial bacteria, helpful algae to outcompete the dangerously fast-growing pest algae, and a massive assortment of detritivores and other scavengers. Biodiversity is the cornerstone of a healthy reef. Sometimes, though, that biodiversity likes to nibble your corals.