LED humidity tent

[Gravelsack]

Hi all, I'm new to this forum but have been growing orchids for several years. Until recently I have been rescuing random noids from grocery store clearance shelves. I've had decent success growing and reblooming them, so recently I decided to take it up a notch and built an indoor pvc humidity tent so that I can keep more exotic species.


If you look at the top you can see the pvc misting pipe. The whole thing is being lit by a Maxspect Razor 160w light. Here's a closer look at both:


It's really quite an amazing light. Fully programmable so you can simulate a shift of spectrum and intensity to give a fantastic dawn to dusk effect. The plants love it too, and have been growing amazingly under it. It's actually much brighter than the photographs show, in fact I don't even run it at full intensity for fear of providing too much light.

The mist is produced by a walgreens ultrasonic humidifier which I glued pvc couplers to with silicone adhesive.


In addition to my noid oncidiums, I have acquired an assortment of bulbophyllum. I've been trying to focus on pleasantly fragrant varieties. So far I have a B. lobbii, a B. ambrosia, and an Elizabeth Anne.




And also a dendrobium rigidum


So that's my current setup and slowly growing collection. Hope you all enjoyed it .

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[wintergirl]

I love it! Nice job! Welcome to OrchidBoard!

[naoki]

Well done! Humidity makes a big difference in ease of orchid growing. In my grow tent, I can get decent humidity with minimum active humidification (big humidity tray at the bottom). How big is the tent?

[Gravelsack]

Originally Posted by naoki

Well done! Humidity makes a big difference in ease of orchid growing. In my grow tent, I can get decent humidity with minimum active humidification (big humidity tray at the bottom). How big is the tent?

Well the entire thing is 7 feet tall, and 3.5 feet wide. The upper chamber with the orchids is 3.5 feet tall. The lower chamber contains the humidifier and random houseplants and is lit by a 26watt cfl bulb.

[naoki]

I just looked at the spec of the Maxspect R420R. It is pretty fancy stuff with nice quality components! It is achieving high PAR by using lots of bluish emitters (more targeted for reef). Is yours 8000K model? I've been curious how orchids will respond to this type of light, so please keep us updated! Especially, it will be interesting to know if the leaf shapes/growth habit changes (e.g. more compact).

[My Green Pets]

Looks dark in there to me...keep us posted !

[Gravelsack]

Originally Posted by naoki

I just looked at the spec of the Maxspect R420R. It is pretty fancy stuff with nice quality components! It is achieving high PAR by using lots of bluish emitters (more targeted for reef). Is yours 8000K model? I've been curious how orchids will respond to this type of light, so please keep us updated! Especially, it will be interesting to know if the leaf shapes/growth habit changes (e.g. more compact).

Indeed it is more targeted for reef keeping. That's what I originally bought it for, but I broke my tank down and sold most of my equipment due to a move. The light was the only thing I kept because I really really like it.

Unfortunately, it's the 16k model since it was originally purchased for reef keeping. I attempted to trade it for the 8k model through my local reef keeping club, but nobody really has that model.

I'm currently looking at the Kessil Amazon Sun as a potential light for my lower chamber.

Originally Posted by CambriaWhat

Looks dark in there to me...keep us posted !

It's likely that the lights were not at full intensity when I took the pictures, but even so my camera does a poor job of capturing just how bright it is. To give you an idea of the range that the light has, I took a few more pictures of the blue and white channels at 1% and 100%.

Blue 1%
Blue 100%

White 1%
White 100%

Blue & White 100%

Again, it's hard to photograph due to my camera's automatic brightness adjustment, but believe me when I say that 1% is extremely dim, and 100% in both channels is blindingly bright.

Also, if you look at the way the light casts on the back wall, you can see that it is highly directional, so almost all of the light is shining down on the plants and very little is escaping out the sides.

[Gravelsack]

Just a quick update here. Today I installed a Dayton plug in humidity controller.


It's hard to read the lcd display, but it's holding the humidity at 70%. The humidity now varies by +/- 1%. The humidifier comes on for 3 minutes and is off for around 2.5 minutes.

This is a big improvement over running the ultrasonic humidifier on a timer in 30 minute intervals, as I had been doing. Previously my humidity was swinging from as low as 30% up to 80%, depending on the weather, which is obviously not ideal.

And here's a little pic showing the growth on my B. ambrosia in the past couple weeks:

Everything is growing quite well, but this one has really been taking off.

Finally, here are some artsy orchid mounts I made at the little ceramic studio up the street from me. I had literally no idea what I was doing, but they came out ok: