Remember, what Nature has is not always what we want. Hard to mimic the ground water, ect, for a peat swamp in cultivation. Some Florida growers figured out pure lfs works great for bicals for example.
As for Capslock's mix, it does look beautiful. If you water enough, you can get away with courser mixes. I freaked when I saw N. aristolochiodes that somebody bought at the 2006 conference(from Black Jungle, I think) and it was in pure cedar mulch(I think-it was pure bark mulch of some kind) and it looked great!
Some German growers have an article in a older CPN using lava pebbles, Seramis and Lectacon(the latter are clay pellet types) and with a few Osmocote an a lot of water, they look great too.
Is the cedar mulch just garden center type stuff?
Cheers,
Joe