Inherited many orchids, need advice and identification help!

[malteseproverb]

Last week, my boyfriend's grandmother passed. Among other things, she's the reason I started growing orchids several years ago. I was told by her family that I should take any and all of her collection of orchids, in addition to her grow lights, media, etc. I was incredibly honored and happy to keep her legacy going in this way. So the reason I'm writing is that I'm a bit overwhelmed and could take some direction as I just took on almost 20 new plants (only a portion of what she had), many of which have maybe seen better days, and many that are very new to me. Maybe you'll chide me as foolish for taking these on, but now that I've driven these from upstate NY to my house I would appreciate any advice on how not to kill them!

Her grow space (a room built in her basement equipped with a room humidifier, grow lights, etc) was overrun with scale, ants, and mealybugs. Some of the plants I took are more effected by this than others. I've eradicated scale and mealybugs before, so I have some ideas on how to deal with this, but it definitely complicates things.

I've already decided that I'm not introducing these plants to my normal grow space. I'm going to keep them in my basement for at least the next few months. I took a light panel with 6 high output T5 lights from NY which I still have to install. At the moment, I'm using the two fluorescent bulbs hanging above my workbench and some clip-on CFL bulbs. Is this enough light for now or do you think it's an emergency to set up the proper grow light panel? I've never used grow lights before. A photo attached of the current set up.


The list of plants I have taken are as follows:

Angraecum sesquipedale
angraecum eburneum
brassavola digbyana
phrag. Mayling Nielsen (wallisii x conchiferum)
Stelis quadrifida 'Len'
oncidium Moon Shadow 'Tiger Tail'
bulbophyllum sumatranum
Beallara Tropic Tom 'Kinky'
bulbophyllum mastersianum
bulbo cobbii

Then there are a few I can't determine what they are. Maybe I should post them in the ID forums?


estacion_seca recently mentioned to me on this board that one can soak a plant in a bucket of water for a period of time to suffocate any bugs and eggs on a plant, which I have never attempted but plan to now, since it's winter and too cold outside for the biweekly relaxing death-chemical spa treatment that I typically rely on in these cases. If anyone has any better ideas let me know! I also plan repot everything, but some of them make me nervous to repot! For instance, I've never grown phrags before and now I have two. What kind of media do phrags like? I'll try anything but s/h. I've heard the Darwin orchid is finicky about being repotted. So what do I do, hope for the best? Some of these plants have moss growing on them, which I would love to keep. Do you think that I should just dump it in case it's harboring evil bugs??

From the plants I took, I wiped off any visible bugs with rubbing alcohol just so mitigate the damage until I can do the marathon repotting/soaking/spraying required. The angraecum sesquipedale recently bloomed but looks pretty terrible. I peeled off some of the scraps of dead leaves from its long stem and there was the fluff of mealybugs in every crevice. The brassavola digbyana is afflicted with... something. What??? It had unbelievable amounts of scale on it. Pics attached.

Should I prioritize setting up the grow lights or repotting/soaking every plant?

Sorry for the one million questions!