Phal "aquaculture" with water beads anyone tried this?

[KendraRF]

Hello everyone, I recently put my two mini phals into water beads.
They were not doing very well when I bought them last year so I put them in fresh moss ect. And they recovered somewhat. But never fully.
So this last week I put my bigger mini into a clear vase with water beads and it did great untill the flower spike died 2 days ago. I cut it off and added some Orchid food to the water i added to the drying beads now its doing better. Much much better.
I put my smaller mini in another container of water beads yesterday but I have not seen a change in my sad little guy yet but I have hope for him.

Now my questions are basically:
Have you done this or similar?
Did you or whould you hydrate the beads with food or just plain water?
What happened to your phals or other orchids?
And finally how did you keep them from drying out unevenly?

Thank you!

[estación seca]

Welcome to the Orchid Board.

I don't know what those beads are.

There are a lot of people who grow many different kinds of orchids in vases. Some fill the vase and let them soak for some hours every now and then. Others leave a small amount of water touching the bottom of the roots all the time. Some add glass beads to the bottom.

There are people using a technique called semi-hydroponics (S/H) for Phals and other orchids.. There is an entire forum here on Orchid Board for S/H. Click on Forums in the left menu and look down.

You can search from the top maroon menu. Use terms like "water culture" or "glass vase" or "vases."