Update: Here is the current dashboard link to live environmental conditions from the orchid terrarium!
IO - Adafruit
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Hey everyone!
I've been growing orchids in Terrariums for about 2 1/2 years now. Have had some success and some failure. I wanted to start keeping track of the things I'm trying in a place where other people can see it, so that's what this thread is for. I'm going to start be describing what I've done over the last few years, then post about present projects.
My methods aren't perfect, and I'm still changing a lot. It takes a long time and a lot of consistency to start getting results, but I'm getting there. The last year has given some particularly great growth.
I have kept freshwater aquariums for probably 15 years on and off. After graduating from college I started keeping dart frogs. That was my introduction to terrariums, but I quickly became WAY more hooked on plants (there are so many kinds!). Orchids in particular have really caught my interest.
It was roughly the beginning of 2018 when I started to focus more on growing the healthiest plants I could, rather than just letting things grow in my frog tank. I had various clippings and divisions from the display tank growing in domed 10x20 trays. My first Orchids came from Andy's orchids, and they spent about a month in these small trays while I worked on a terrarium for them.
---------- Post added at 05:26 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:10 PM ----------
The tank I built for the orchids is roughly 20x20x44". It is a PVC pipe frame wrapped in clear plastic sheet. Egg crate is hung up on the walls for hanging mounts from. The whole thing sits in a black plastic tray. the resulting tank was cheap, lightweight, and roughly 70 gallons.
This tank sits on one shelf of a 48x18x82" wire rack. I don't have too many older pictures.
The 10x20 nursery tray of moss was a big help in keeping humidity up while there were so few plants.
I also used a medium sized computer fan to help keep the air mixed. You can see it on the left side of the tank. Nothing special here, it was always on.
The whole thing is lit by 48" LED strips. The lights are not fancy at all, but they were extremely cheap for the amount of light produced. They fit the rack perfectly.
Products used:
Plastic tray -
Robot Check
Plastic sheet -
Robot Check
Fan -
Amazon.com
Lights -
Robot Check
Terrarium growing experiments
Threaded Mode
