Rajah lighting

[timbudtwo]

Would a 100w basking spot lamp be good for lighing a rajah? Someone in the 'My 6 Year Old Rajah' thread posted thats what he used. And his is very red. So would this be okay?

 

[Tony Paroubek]

I suggest you reread all the posts that deal with the growing conditions the plant is receiving. In them you will find that the terrarium is situated next to a South facing window. Where it gets bright indirect light for the entire day. I suspect the majority of the success with the rajah and the rest of the plants is for this reason. Not the 100watt incandescent bulb that is a minor suppliment in my opinion.
Tony

 

[swords]

I would think the lamp would get too hot for the plant, especially a herp basking lamp it'd be like a metal halide without all the good light. I've tried those spot n gro lamps on house plants before (not Nepenthes) but they got so warm and dried out the air real bad. They should call em plant killing bulbs! Cactus might be fine under em...

If I were to try an incandecent bulb I think I would try those new clear/blue bulbs called Reveal (I think) by GE they look (in the store anyway) that they might give a good spectrum and perhaps offer a more intense white light than a basking or gro n show type lamp.

Try an experiment and let us know what happens and make sure no water vapor settles on those hot bulbs from a mister or kapow!

 

[Joachim]

We already discussed the growing conditions of Axels plant at our German CP-forum. His terrarium does not stand at the windowsill, the distance to the window is about one meter. So direct sunlight never reaches the terrarium. On one of the pictures the stem of the plant can be seen quite good and the distance between the internodes are quite big. So in fact I do think this plant is grown under quite low light levels and N. rajah seems to like it. I burned my biggest plant badly a few weeks ago in a place of my terrarium where light levels aren't the highest and now I do suspect it is coming back... This experience seems to match observations from the wild where N. rajah also dies back when growing over the surrounding vegetation, a friend told me. They do of course flower and produce basal offshots before the main growing point dies back.

N. rajah is safe in TC so it isn't a big risk doing some experiments with this plant and trying to grow it under low light levels may be worth it. Even when loosing one it can be replaced with an identical clone. Please don't to this with plants from wild collected seed or plants not beeing safe in TC!

I have a bunch of small seedlings in my terrarium right now and the ones at the shadiest place below a big N. clipeata leaf seems to grow best.

Joachim

 

[nepenthes gracilis]

Joachim, interesting... Even though you say your Rajah like it shady and they grow better, in the wild they grow in full sun, it may be dappled or filtered out a bit but not nearly like full shade! Hmm.....mine seems fine even though it is less than 20cm from my southern window. Hmm...