My Terrarium Design

[ryrycochinco]

I really want to build a cool terrarium for my masdevallias. I plan on setting the terrarium up in a old 10 gallon fish tank I found in my garage. I bought clay pellots a ultrasonic fogger and special netting to separate the clay and sphag lairs. I want to make a small section full of water for a fogger and another of two lairs of sphag and clay pellets. I wanted to completely enclose the water section and refill it regulary, but I later thought that would be a waste so I thought raising the wall off the floor creating a bottom opening would allow excess water that runs to the bottom( clay pellets)to be reused. I have my doudts about whether this will work. Your advice would be extremely helpfull .

[Paul Mc]

A lot of terrarium builds I've seen have false bottoms created from eggcrate or other similar material that lifts your clay pellets and earth medium (sphag or cocunet husk,etc...) off of the bottom and away from the water resevoir. I personally built mine using eggcrate, cut it a little bit in so there was an inch around each side, and filled that in with pea gravel so you could not see the false bottom.

The one issue I see is that water stagnates, and you will need to be sure it's continually moving. My terrarium was only 1ft x 1ft on the bottom, and I have a waterfall feature so the pump keeps the water moving.

One note about ultrasonic foggers though. They tend to splash water all over the place. I tried one for a long time but everything just kept getting wet around it and the water resevoir lost water very quickly. If your orchids are sensitive to water splash, you will want to make sure they are far away from the danger or examine other means of fogging.

[WhiteRabbit]

sounds cool! I hope you will post pix of what you come up with!