I played it safe and ordered a bag of paph. mix at repotme.com
Agreed! I started using this for my Paphs after negative experiences trying to mix my own. It's now the only pre-packaged orchid medium I buy. A bit expensive (especially rePotme's shipping prices), but great results.
Thanks for your input I have about 15 plants at the moment, and gettng ready to expand my paphs. So I was looking more for something I could put together myself. Shipping is so high on a large bag. No place around here to buy rice hulls either. Maybe I should continue with the fir bark and just add more spag. for moisture retention. I'll look for it at the show in January tho.
We have trouble getting potting media here, too. I got some lava rock that they sell at a lot of hardware stores for landscaping and picked out the smallest pieces to use for s/h. It's cheap. Then I got a nice plastic container at a dollar store and used a soldering iron to put the holes in 1 inch from the bottom to form the reservoir. I have also heated a nail over a candle to burn through the plastic. That works well too. Just be sure to soak the lava rock really well. I like to add a little fertilizer and Superthrive when I soak the rock.