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Tell me about your large terrarium setup

  • #21
Actually the terrarium is located in my brothers room. Right now he's going to college and he just got home. It was a nice surprise for him... Muhwahahahah! I made sure the terrarium will have lots of room for climbing stems of nepenthes (I know thats a while off) and for tall orchids and such.

BTW: Does anyone know how to kill algae without damaging my plants? You can see the algae as the light green in one of the pics. Maybe Barley? :biggrin:
 
  • #22
Swords,,

There is a specially designed sealer for wood that I use for making my rafting dry boxes. It will make wood completly waterproof (I can testify to that as I have burried my boat in some big holes and waves and I have flipped the boat, inside the box has always remained dry.) I can remember the name off the top of my head but I'll rumage through my river closet when I get home and see if I still have the lable or the can.

Pyro
 
  • #23
JoeC, there is a small water pump which pours water continuously over the pieces of wood, this keeps the wood soaking wet and mosses (about 4 different types), butterworts, tiny ferns, crystalwort, and saginellia have all colonized it and I'm gonna add some epiphytic bladderworts soon.
The water is dark brown because the water is pooled in a dug out section of pure long fibered sphagnum moss. I have a few scoops of gravel and some river stones in there to add interest to the bottom and add some aquatic plant anchoring sites. I have a group of steel blue gardneri killies who absolutely love this peaty bog and can snack continuously from the springtails and other copeopods hopping across the terrarium floor and falling into the water.
There is a full description of the setup at:
<a href="http://the-natural-aquarium.com/Cloudterrarium.html

Pyro," target="_blank">http://the-natural-aquarium.com/Cloudterrarium.html

Pyro,</a> thanks for looking up that sealer! Today is payday too!
 
  • #24
Don't use Thompson's water seal to seal your plywood unless you paint over it with an epoxy paint afterwards. It is toxic and will leach out otherwise. You can get some good epoxy paint at a marine store. You can seal up the seams with 5200 sealant. It is much better than silicone. Good luck.

Kim
 
  • #25
Wow, that is really cool.
I have never even seen the fog aspect in place anywhere....creative:)
How much time and money do you think you have put into that? Im pretty new to the whole plant world....I was just looking for a lower cost hobby than PCs and cars....although i think maybe i make all my hobbies expensive....sigh:)
do you have the lights all on a timer and stuff? (im imagining building a circuit board with sensor output and redirect to a program on my pc - perhaps even set up a Terrarium Monitor i could view over the internet:))
 
  • #26
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 &#36&#36&#36 whereas the Vicks humidifiers are only &#3640 or so and do the same thing! :cool:

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 &#364.95 each so you can concentrate on putting more &#36&#36 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!
 
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