Joe,
I just stepped down the output of a regular Ultrasonic Humidifier that you can buy cheaply at any department store pharmacy. Make sure the model you buy says ULTRASONIC not just "cool mist" as the cool mist humidifier only evaporates water from a wick which looks like a car's airfilter by sucking air through it witha fan where as the ultrasonic humidifier creates supertiny waterdroplets (fog) which is the coolest #### thing to see!
I like the Vicks V5100 model cos it's super quiet and holds 1-2 gallons of water so I only need to fill it every couple weeks as running it for 15-30 minutes will leave water droplets on the plants any more in an enclosed space is overkill and unnecessary.
I could buy a professional misting system from a reptile supplier but it would be several hundred $$$ whereas the Vicks humidifiers are only ุ or so and do the same thing!
Walmart is where I bought the humidifier and timer that it's set on. GE makes a timer which can be set in 15 minute increments and is perfect for terrarium fogger use.
Yes, I have the lights on a timer, they are on for 14 hours a day this time of year. and will get up to 16 hours and then fall gradually back to 12 hours in midwinter. This keeps the plants flowering at the appropriate time.
Timers are only Ŭ.95 each so you can concentrate on putting more $$ into lighting. The more the merrier when you are using regular flourescent lighting. Be careful with the newer "Power Compact" or "Compact Flourescent" tubes (they are the ones which only have a plug on one end and look like a regular tube bent in half) they can get hot and burn your plants, even in very humid terrarium conditions-I fried the leaves on most of my nepenthes using 110 watts of PC lighting over my nepenthes terrarium. However I wouldn't worry if you're using normal flourescent tubes (which is what I switched to) in the 20 & 40 watt sizes. On the terrarium above I am using six 40 watt flourescent tubes, 240 watts total, and no worries of scorching the plants-the philo is almost touching the FL tubes and it's still soft and green. Lemme tell you, that photo above isn't very old and already the plants have been pruned quite a few times, they would be growing even more but I limit the nutrient input because there are small fish in the bog which adds nitrogenous waste and phosphates so I just add ttrace elements to balance everything out.
Terrariums are addictive! Once you combine interest in CPs and terrariums (and see how well they grow in a terrarium) you become very addicted very quickly!
I began with a single fishtank dedicated to true aquatic plants and now I have a house full of tanks, terrariums and propagation chambers (3 of my tanks aren't even setup cos I got nowhere to put them to use!).
Good luck and feel free to private message me if you wanna discuss anything about getting a terrarium going (I may even be able to help you with some weird plants to put in) I am working on a terrarium book so hopefully I can be of some help to you.
Take it easy!