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  #21  
Old 08-09-2020, 05:01 AM
Orchidwizard Orchidwizard is offline
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uff my computer hates the full sized images used in this post but the content is great.
Thanks for showing us what it takes to keep mounted Orchids happy.

One reason I suppose you don't read about terrarium growing much is because as you have described well it is a constant learning curve and perpetual adjusting and fiddling.

Your observations on air movement and humidity control have been very informative especially your visit to the mini orchid nursery. Orchids love to have air around them and have as much access to water without restricting air flow. I grow quite a few small orchids with no air flow and this works fine too as long as there is no moss restricting air - like you pointed out live moss competes too much with Orchids - it is a shame you don't know what slow growing variety you use that works better, the substrate needs to be as loose as possible to allow air flow to the roots (vitally important with no air movement) , humidity can never go above 90% and overcrowding should be avoided.

You mention having to set up complicated fan timers and manually adjust the timings to adjust humidity but there are very cheap devices called humidity fan controllers that do exactly that, automatically, once a set humidity is reached the fan is switched on, once it reaches the set minimum it turns off again, this in conjunction with a constant low other fan would sort your manual humidity issues. It is something I have been debating to get for a while but mine copes except for me having to adjust things every season or so as the weather changes.
I already have lights, timers, heatmats, daytime temp controller,s night time temp controllers, the mistking is very expensive and adding a humidity control on top is too much for me. Maybe one day..

I like how all of the basics of your setup are quite easy and inexpensive to make, once you add all the extras it adds up of course. I have a glass terrarium but moving that is a mission and yours would be good as a second terrarium if I wanted to expand mine...

Automation is the key for me to expand further. Again it is finding the balance between providing the max watering without restricting air flow to the roots in any way, cheaply, automatically and efficiently.

A mistking is imo too expensive for a mini terrarium so I am experimenting with different methods and I would post them but I think you did the right things to wait a couple of years before showing any results and I will have to be patient and do the same.

I have got one important question I am hoping you can help me with if I ever adopt your shelf design. I can see you have a drip tray and the outside is surrounded by clear plastic but when the mist nozzles come on don't they spray out of the tray onto the plastic sheeting? To me it looks like the plastic sheeting runs outside of the humidity tray so anything caught by it would flow to the floor? Or do you have additional sheeting all around the tray (hard to see) that keeps water inside the tray without it spraying out of the setup?

Also, I am curious about controlling the speed of my fans, I just have different powered fans that I use but I have wanted to tinker with them, what fan speed controller do you use to control the speed of computer fans? Thx

Last edited by Orchidwizard; 08-09-2020 at 05:28 AM..
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  #22  
Old 08-09-2020, 10:45 AM
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DirtyCoconuts DirtyCoconuts is offline
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one other thing to throw out there is that this tank is a super terrarium with many zones and the ability to have several RANGES of plants....that is hard.

making one small niche is not as hard. I have made tanks (for reptiles, not for orchids) with really narrow climate needs at that is actually a lot easier bc you have directions.


kind of like cooking vs baking....hyper specific vs more improvisational.

one of the things that is so incredible about this tank. but not all tanks need to be so ambitious
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  #23  
Old 08-09-2020, 04:44 PM
MJG MJG is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Orchidwizard View Post
You mention having to set up complicated fan timers and manually adjust the timings to adjust humidity but there are very cheap devices called humidity fan controllers that do exactly that, automatically, once a set humidity is reached the fan is switched on, once it reaches the set minimum it turns off again, this in conjunction with a constant low other fan would sort your manual humidity issues. It is something I have been debating to get for a while but mine copes except for me having to adjust things every season or so as the weather changes.
This is how I've planned my terrarium. I have the parts. I'm just waiting for the new terrarium to arrive. There's one piece of this I'm worried about. Where do you place the humidity probe to get a proper reading? I foresee mine getting rained on every time the sprinklers come on, which will trigger the fan. Mine's also a 36" high tank. It's bound to be more humid at the bottom than the top.

I can live with the probe being halfway down the tank for an average tank humidity reading. But how do you place the probe so that it's measuring the tank's humidity -- as opposed to how wet the probe is?
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  #24  
Old 08-09-2020, 11:05 PM
Draikan Draikan is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Orchidwizard View Post
uff my computer hates the full sized images used in this post but the content is great.
Thanks for showing us what it takes to keep mounted Orchids happy.

One reason I suppose you don't read about terrarium growing much is because as you have described well it is a constant learning curve and perpetual adjusting and fiddling.

Your observations on air movement and humidity control have been very informative especially your visit to the mini orchid nursery. Orchids love to have air around them and have as much access to water without restricting air flow. I grow quite a few small orchids with no air flow and this works fine too as long as there is no moss restricting air - like you pointed out live moss competes too much with Orchids - it is a shame you don't know what slow growing variety you use that works better, the substrate needs to be as loose as possible to allow air flow to the roots (vitally important with no air movement) , humidity can never go above 90% and overcrowding should be avoided.

You mention having to set up complicated fan timers and manually adjust the timings to adjust humidity but there are very cheap devices called humidity fan controllers that do exactly that, automatically, once a set humidity is reached the fan is switched on, once it reaches the set minimum it turns off again, this in conjunction with a constant low other fan would sort your manual humidity issues. It is something I have been debating to get for a while but mine copes except for me having to adjust things every season or so as the weather changes.
I already have lights, timers, heatmats, daytime temp controller,s night time temp controllers, the mistking is very expensive and adding a humidity control on top is too much for me. Maybe one day..

I like how all of the basics of your setup are quite easy and inexpensive to make, once you add all the extras it adds up of course. I have a glass terrarium but moving that is a mission and yours would be good as a second terrarium if I wanted to expand mine...

Automation is the key for me to expand further. Again it is finding the balance between providing the max watering without restricting air flow to the roots in any way, cheaply, automatically and efficiently.

A mistking is imo too expensive for a mini terrarium so I am experimenting with different methods and I would post them but I think you did the right things to wait a couple of years before showing any results and I will have to be patient and do the same.

I have got one important question I am hoping you can help me with if I ever adopt your shelf design. I can see you have a drip tray and the outside is surrounded by clear plastic but when the mist nozzles come on don't they spray out of the tray onto the plastic sheeting? To me it looks like the plastic sheeting runs outside of the humidity tray so anything caught by it would flow to the floor? Or do you have additional sheeting all around the tray (hard to see) that keeps water inside the tray without it spraying out of the setup?

Also, I am curious about controlling the speed of my fans, I just have different powered fans that I use but I have wanted to tinker with them, what fan speed controller do you use to control the speed of computer fans? Thx
Yeah automation has been key for me with the minis. They grow a bit slow, and one mistake can set them back months. The chances of me messing something up in the time it takes them to acclimate, root, grow, and bloom are just too high. If you get sick, have to go out of town, get busy with work, it's not realistic for most people to provide perfect consistency for a year.

On my big tank, the pvc frame is wrapped tightly in plastic. That whole thing sits INSIDE the tray. The front of the terrarium is just a plastic flap that can be lifted up, or tucked into the front of the tray when it is down. Any water that sprays onto the sides (which happens each time I mist) just runs down the sides into the tray. I'm sorry I don't have any pictures of this specifically, but look at the second picture in the very first post.

For fan speed control, I couldn't find anything that would change the speed through the day, so I built my own. I have used this speed controller before, it is ok. You just set the speed and leave it. Works for adjusting a single fan but not useful for simulating weather, daily cycle, or humidity control.

It looks like you and I have slightly different humidity control issues. I'm trying to run my circulation fan more, and need to keep humidity up. I've never had problems with humidity being too high, only with the roots being too wet (with liquid water trapped in sphagnum). I'm trying to work out my airflow and moisture first, and then I want to start mounting without sphagnum.

---------- Post added at 06:38 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:33 PM ----------

Quote:
Originally Posted by DirtyCoconuts View Post
one other thing to throw out there is that this tank is a super terrarium with many zones and the ability to have several RANGES of plants....that is hard.

making one small niche is not as hard. I have made tanks (for reptiles, not for orchids) with really narrow climate needs at that is actually a lot easier bc you have directions.


kind of like cooking vs baking....hyper specific vs more improvisational.

one of the things that is so incredible about this tank. but not all tanks need to be so ambitious
I'm not sure if this is what I'm doing. As I've added more circulation, I feel like my conditions have become MORE uniform. The constant airflow really helps equalize temperature and humidity through the tank. I think most of my plants are intermediate, and prefer medium airflow and regular watering. I haven't deliberately put cooler/wetter species toward the back or bottom.

Light however, varies tremendously from the top of the tank to the bottom. I really only have a few plants that like to be at the top of the tank. Most prefer the mid level, and divisions or low light plants might do a bit better at the very bottom. The few dendrobium and bulbos I have seem to like a lot of light.

---------- Post added at 07:02 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:38 PM ----------

Quote:
Originally Posted by MJG View Post
This is how I've planned my terrarium. I have the parts. I'm just waiting for the new terrarium to arrive. There's one piece of this I'm worried about. Where do you place the humidity probe to get a proper reading? I foresee mine getting rained on every time the sprinklers come on, which will trigger the fan. Mine's also a 36" high tank. It's bound to be more humid at the bottom than the top.

I can live with the probe being halfway down the tank for an average tank humidity reading. But how do you place the probe so that it's measuring the tank's humidity -- as opposed to how wet the probe is?
I learned a lot about this when I started building my humidity sensor. It's actually amazing how much humidity varies through the tank. Relative humidity also varies a LOT with temperature, even if the air has the same amount of water evaporated in it. This can make the top of the tank near the lights even dryer than you might expect, and is another great reason to use LEDs. You'll even see higher humidity close to the plants if there is low airflow, just from transpiration off the leaves.

This calculator is fun to play with: Dew Point Calculator

For example, you can see that 80% humidity at 70 degress (F), is only 54% humidity at 80 degrees.

I wasn't able to get a stable, accurate humidity measurement until after I got the circulation fan running all the time on the little test tank.

Unfortunately most humidity sensors have serious problems in terrarium conditions. They aren't water proof, they break or permanently read incorrect humidity if you get them wet. They have poorer accuracy in very wet or dry conditions, which usually means <20% or >80%. And their readings drift over time if they spend more than a few days in these extremes. I recently tested one that accumulated 5% error in just one month inside a terrarium, I gave up on it rather than continuing the test.

This is fine if you are controlling a bathroom vent fan or something, it just needs to turn on when the air is "wet", and turn off when it is "not wet". If you are trying to accurately maintain or measure humidity, I don't really think this is adequate. Especially for growing orchids when what we really care about is the 70-100% range. We are talking about how the air dries out the plant and the mount, so if the real humidity is 85% and the sensor says 90%, the air is 50% dryer than the sensor thinks (15%/10%)! The plants see some variation naturally, so this isn't necessarily bad. Just know that the readings from most humidity sensors can be very inaccurate in our conditions.

---------- Post added at 08:05 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:02 PM ----------

I guess I should post about the humidity sensor now, since we are talking about it. I have used a bunch of cheap humidity sensors in terrariums, and they all broke within a few weeks. I did a bunch of research into humidity sensors before I started this, so I'm going to dump some of it here.

As far as I've been able to find, there are really only two types of humidity sensor:

-Capacitive, these sensors are tiny integrated circuits that measure how the capacitance of a polymer membrane changes as it absorbs water from the air. This is what pretty much all affordable humidity sensors including handheld meters, the govee, and other terrarium products are based on. Unfortunately these are not waterproof, if water gets onto the sensing element it can permanently damage the sensor. Obviously this is bad if we are spraying mist around. This type of sensor is also not able to withstand prolonged exposure to humidities above about 80%. In a high humidity environment the sensor output will drift up, causing the sensor to report a humidity that is erroneously high.

-Chilled Mirror Hygrometer (CMH), this is a precision optical instrument that uses a reflectance sensor and chiller to cool a gold plated copper mirror until condensation forms, and then measure the mirror temperature. The temperature at which condensation begins to form is the dew point of the air. These can be very accurate and robust, but typically cost $5k-10k (my hobby budget would never financially recover from this).

Way more than you ever wanted to know about humidity measurent: Hygrometer - Wikipedia

I am trying to address the shortcomings of the capacitive sensor, so it can be used in terrarium conditions. If that does not work, I may try to build a cheap CMH.

Fortunately the first waterproofing step is provided by the manufacturer. A couple of manufacturers have started to offer sensors with polymer membranes over the sensing element. This blocks liquid water and dust, but allows water vapor to diffuse through and reach the sensing element.

This is an example of a sensor with no membrane cover.

You can see how water droplets from a mister could drift right onto the sensing element in the middle.

I'm using this tiny part:

The actual sensor is the little square near my finger, the rest is just circuit board and connector. That white square over the sensor is the polymer membrane. This part is a +/-1.5% humidity sensor, and +/-0.1 degree C temperature sensor in one package. Having both temperature and relative humidity is critical for calculating other air parameters like absolute humidity and VPD.

VPD is super interesting, this is one of the best sources I've found about it: The Ultimate Vapor Pressure Deficit (VPD) Guide - Pulse Labs

After getting a sensor with a protected sensing element, the next step was to protect the electronics, and keep liquid water off the membrane. If you get water on the membrane it won't break the sensor permanently, but it will just read 100% humidity since it is literally under water.

I used a cable gland, a 1/2" pvc coupler, and a plastic vent plug filter.




My hope was that this would be adequate for protecting the sensor, and allow only water vapor to reach the sensor. This turned out not to work too well. It was ok for a few weeks, but when I finally did get it wet, it just trapped water in the housing. The sensor was measuring an erroneously high humidity until I dryed it out. The actual sensor was working fine, but since there was water inside the housing, the humidity at the sensor was higher than the humidity in the rest of the tank.

I've given up on the vent plug, and no longer use it. I just let the fan keep the sensor supplied with fresh air for accurate measurements of the terrarium air. The sensor is pulled back into the housing by about 1", and the opening points down, so water doesn't really get up inside.

This is the version that accumulated 5% error over the first month of test (it reports humidities that are 5% higher than sensors it used to match perfectly, that were never exposed to terrarium conditions). After determining that it was no longer accurate I gave up on this version and started a second one.

The next version needed to do something to ensure the sensor would never experience >80% humidity, so it wouldn't drift over time. The only way I could think of to do this was to heat the air at the sensor slightly to drop the relative humidity right at the sensor. Because the humidity sensor has a temperature sensor built in, I can still accurately calculate the absolute humidity of the heated air. Then I needed a second (unheated) air temperature sensor to convert back to the relative humidity of the terrarium air. It sounds like a lot of steps, but it actually works great! This resource goes into pretty good detail about how these measurements and conversions can work: https://www.silabs.com/documents/pub...otes/AN607.pdf

This next prototype is a little bit hacky, it just has the air temperature sensor strapped to the side and the heater is inside right at the sensing element.


This version has been in the tank, at >85% relative humidity at all times, and seems to still be completely within the specified accuracy. I take it out of the tank to compare to ambient sensor data about once a week. I have really high hopes for this one.

The dashboard is currently showing data from this sensor: https://io.adafruit.com/jdamelio/das...ity?kiosk=true

On the humidity plots, orange is the humidity of the heated sensor, red is the target humidity calculated from a VPD of 0.3kPa and the air temperature, and green is the actual terrarium air relative humidity.

On the temperature plots, red is the heated sensor temperature, green is the terrarium air temperature, and blue is just temperature of the air outside the terrarium.

There are bunch of really cool little details on these plots. For example you can see a tiny drop in temperature each time the mister goes off. This is from the evaporation of the mist into the air. You can also see the humidity decreasing slightly whenever the fan speed is higher. And you can see the humidity get bumped up by the mister each time it falls to the target humidity! You can also see the humidity fall when the lights turn on, and rise when they go off, just from the 1 degree C change in air temperature.

Last edited by Draikan; 08-09-2020 at 11:32 PM..
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  #25  
Old 08-10-2020, 04:57 PM
MJG MJG is offline
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Thank you again for your posts. I am creating a big terrarium that will have microclimates. Your discussion of the humidity considerations is invaluable.
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  #26  
Old 08-10-2020, 09:52 PM
Draikan Draikan is offline
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Ok and here is my misting system. I am not using this to spray the plants like you normally would with a misting system. It is only for putting tiny bursts of moisture into the air to raise humidity. I will use a regular Mist King system for the actual irrigation.

The alternative to this system is probably an ultrasonic humidifier. I didn't do this because:
  1. It's a pain to setup plumbing for the fog
  2. I didn't want to try and control an AC outlet
  3. The cost of a bunch of humidifiers for multiple tanks with different climates would be too high
  4. It's a pain to refill humidifiers, and I couldn't think of a good way to make that automatic

Instead I am using a 24V solenoid valve to quickly turn a single mister on and off. This lets me reuse all the 1/4" push connect fitting used by mistking (easy plumbing) and get more complicated parts from residential RO systems. Things like flow limiters, check valves, tanks, and valves are all cheaply available for RO systems, and they are even food grade since they are meant for drinking water!

For a very short burst of mist, there isn't time to wait for a pump to spin up, so I am using a tank pressurized to about 60-80psi.

I am using a different nozzle than the mistking. I believe the mistking uses a variation of this nozzle: Plastic Mist Nozzle-Plastic Mist Nozzle Manufacturer - RELAB This is a 0.4mm nozzle. Other 0.4mm nozzles I have tested produce very similar mist to the mistking, so I am pretty confident that it is in fact a 0.4mm nozzle.

Since I am trying to produce short bursts of very fine mist that quickly evaporate, I need to produce the smallest mist particle size possible to speed the evaporation. The quick evaporation is what prevents this from just splattering the plants and keeping them wet. I have switched to these 0.3mm nozzles: Robot Check They are excellent, but they do not have the built in filter or check valve of the mistking. They do produce a finer mist than the mistking, and the flowrate is lower, which is perfect for fine control.

I should also note that the 0.3mm nozzles probably aren't better for most people using a mistking. They produce a very fine mist that sort of swirls around the tank without settling. It's actually harder to get things properly wet with these nozzles, and you have to run the pump longer. Vertical surfaces are particularly challenging, as the mist has very little inertia. It can't really "impact" a background and wet it, they just float around and sink to the bottom of the tank.

You also can not use an orifice smaller than 0.3mm with the mistking. There is not enough pressure to force water through the smaller orifices. A higher pressure pump and smaller nozzles would produce finer mist that evaporates faster, but it is significantly more expensive and harder to find parts.

The plumbing diagram for this system is below:



The pump is used to pressurize a 2 gallon RO tank: Robot Check

The check valve prevents the pressurized tank from flowing back through the pump. Check valve: Robot Check

A pressure switch will be used to keep the tank pressurized. I have not actually tested the pressure switch yet. I don't have the right electrical connectors. I pressurized the tank to 80psi a month ago, it has been running on and off since then and only dropped to 60psi. Once there are multiple zones running from the same tank, the automatic pressure control will be more useful.

The valve is this one: Plastic Solenoid Water Valve, Fast Close Electric Valve
It's guts are all plastic and stainless. It works great and switches in under 20ms, which is important for generating short bursts of mist. I am using the 24VDC version. You could use the 110VAC version with a standard outlet timer if you wanted to.

I considered using a cheaper valve: https://www.amazon.com/DIGITEN-Solen...dp/B00X6RAHMU? but decided I didn't want to risk it.

Enjoy this boring closeup of the tank:



And here is a valve:


I don't have an RO system setup in the apartment I'm currently living in, which is why I am using a mistking pump to pressurize the tank. If I already had a pressurized RO system, I would just tee off of that to feed the solenoids, and skip the pump and pressure switch.

This system currently mists for 250ms whenever the humidity in the tank drops below the setpoint. You can see this on the humidity plot on the dashboard. Whenever the tank humidity (green) drops to the setpoint (red) the solenoid activates briefly to push the humidity back up. If the fan speed is increased, the solenoid will mist more frequently, and the humidity will not drop below the setpoint.

These solenoids could be used for extra mist zones, drippers, whatever. You can run many many zones on a single pump and tank because the pump does not have to supply all the flow. The tank supplies the peak flow, and the pump can recharge the tank later. I am doing this with the entry level mistking pump. This is a cheaper way to add zones (about $25 for the valve and fittings) to a mistking system than buying more pumps, it also gives much better control over mist timing, if you want all your zones timed differently.

The humidity control I am using this for requires an accurate humidity sensor to be useful. If we just want individually timed zones, the sensing is not important.
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Old 08-11-2020, 12:03 AM
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Your setup there is amazing and I would not tinker if you are happy but I found a very simple way to use the ultrasonic without refilling it

I made a void (plexiglass walls with holes and some custom filters) in my leca layer at the bottom and added a pump and that feeds a small box (also plexiglass) in the top of the tank where my ultrasonic plate is. The pump ensures there is always water and it is on at the same time as the humidifier.

They are both controlled by smart sockets so I can make the timers infinitely specific but they are just on at night lol


Yours achieves a lot more control but I was just adding a bit of an idea considering your comment about refilling.


Loving this thread
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Old 08-11-2020, 09:24 PM
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Ok now we can get back to plants!

I am still running this environmental control system on the small tank. Right now, I'm mostly using it to accumulate testing time on the humidity sensor. The point is to grow better orchids though, so once I got everything running I decided to place an Ecuagenera order, and see how some new species would do in this controlled environment.

I received these a little over two weeks ago, and they've been in the test tank ever since.

New species, from left to right:
Platystele apoloae
Lepanthes telipogoniflora
Lepanthes mariposa
Trisetella hoeijeri
Lepanthopsis astrophora
Trisetella andreettae
Stelis guianensis var Maria
Lepanthes dictydion
Pleurothallis niveoglobula







We were seeing soome 90+ temps when these arrived, and I believe they spent about 1 week in transit, So a couple of them had a really rough time.

Trisetella hoeijeri quickly lost all but two of its leaves. It has held on to them though and they look healthy, so I'm still hoping this one pulls through. It's gonna take it a while to recover though.

Stelis guianensis var Maria arrived with two very limp leaves. They dropped a few days later. Odds are really slim for this one, but there is a tiny bit of green left. I'm pretty sure this one won't make it, but I haven't thrown it out yet.

Lepanthes mariposa only had a few leaves left when it arrived, and it dropped them a few days later. I'm pretty sure it's dead.

The rest of the plants look pretty good. They were unmounted, so I had to run to the pet store for cork and sphagnum to get them mounted up.

Lepanthopsis astrophora arrived super healthy. I'm so excited to be growing this plant. I've been meaning to try it for a long time, but haven't been able to find one for sale. the blooms are amazing, but now that I have it I'm also really impressed with the foliage. The leaves are thick, and slightly transparent. When they are wet they look like emeralds. I'll try to get a closeup when I water tomorrow.

Lepanthes telipogoniflora arrived healthy, but way smaller than I expected. This plant is tiny. High hopes for this one, can't wait for blooms!

---------- Post added at 06:24 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:08 PM ----------

I have some observations from the first few weeks of growing in these conditions.

First the airflow. The fan is giant for this tank. I have it running at 30% for 5 minutes, then at 15% for 15 minutes. So that's about 32CFM and 16CFM in 10 gallons. This fan was meant for my bigger tank, but the plants seem fine with it. I have the fan blowing into the coner with no plants, so not blowing on the plants directly. At 32CFM you can just see the leaves moving slightly. I thought this would be too much, but the plants seem to like it. Maybe I will have to add even more airflow to the big tank when I finally get it back.

There are a few gaps in the top of this tank where outside air can mix in. With so much circulation, this will pull the humidity down pretty quickly. The humidity sensor and mister are doing a great job of keeping the humidity above 85% at all times.

I am watering these plants manually at the moment. Every other day I soak them in a cup of water, and swish them around very gently. I am just using room temp tap water at the moment, but our water here is super soft (25ppm).

The extra airflow is doing a really good job of drying off the plants. I see no water remaining on the leaves after just a few hours. The sphagnum mounts do hold on to water, but they are drying out much faster than in previous tanks. What I was really excited to see was that while the water does evaporate out of the sphagnum quickly, it takes way longer for the sphagnum to get to that very dry, crunchy/crisp state. I got really busy with work last week, and forgot to water for two days, the sphagnum obviously didn't have any extra water in it, but it was still barely damp and flexible. The plants all looked great with no shriveled leaves or droopiness. Without humidity control, I would expect this much airflow to turn sphagnum bone dry in this much time. I think this is a really good sign for roots being able to survive without sphagnum, which should get me closer to growing bare root with daily soaking.
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Old 08-11-2020, 10:19 PM
MJG MJG is offline
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Coveting your Ecuagenera haul. I'm waiting for my terrarium to get here to place my next order with them.

Different topic...? Several of us have been talking on other threads about achieving temperature variations. There's been a lot of talk about how to achieve a 10 degree or so drop in temperature overnight. Doing it with manual intervention every night is easy enough. I'm looking for a good solution for automated cooling, that with work in a big enclosure.

I'd love to hear your thoughts about this if you've tackled it yet.

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Old 08-11-2020, 11:51 PM
Draikan Draikan is offline
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Terrarium growing experiments
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I haven't really done temperature control yet.

I have some ideas, but they are just ideas for now. Not things I've tested. Since changing the temperature changes humidity, I wanted to tackle humidity first.

I think converting a wine cooler is a great idea. Most have a drain built in, and you can just add a day/night thermostat. For light you'd probably want to cut a hole in the top, and add a glass panel. this would let you put the light outside the tank, which should make it easier to keep cool.

I think this is the best non-wine cooler build I've seen: Cool vivarium – an even cooler installation – orchidkarma and she just uses a portable air conditioner.

I'd kinda like to pick up a used reef aquarium chiller, and bubble air through cold water inside the terrarium using a big airstone. This seems like it could be pretty effective.

Whatever you do go big! Cooling systems usually don't scale down well.

You might also want to measure what you already get for day night variation. I'm getting >8 degrees most nights on the tiny tank, just from turning the LEDs off and opening the windows. The LEDs on the 10g are super weak, so I'd expect for most tanks to see a bigger swing.
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