Deflasked Ghost ( Dendrophylax lindenii)- seeking advice
 

Hello,everyone. I deflasked a ghost orchid flask last night. So far so good and I intend to make all seedlings survive and I am seeking your advice. If you have any experience with these, please let me know if I should change/improve anything in my growth plan. I swear I read everything I could find on ghosties but anything helps.

Deflasking process:
1. Sterilized everything ( including my hands) with bleach/alcohol. Boiled spanish moss to kill all bacteria for about 10 minutes.
2. Took babies out of flask with tweezers and rinsed in room temperature distilled water.
3. Put it on a bed of wet ( cooled it off after boiling) spanish moss. No chemicals were used on babies thus far.
4. Put a 1 inch layer of distilled water in disinfected 5 gal fish tank, then put my plastic container with moss and babies into the tank, covered tank with disinfected acrylic cover
5. As of this morning, humidity on top of the tank is 85% so I assume at the bottom is close to a 100%. I misted babies lightly with RO water.

Here is plan going forward, please let me know if I can improve:
1. Misting daily with RO water , more often if humidity falls.
2. in 3 days, bleach the 5 gal tank again, boil another batch of spanish moss, soak it in very light solution of physan and orchid fertilizer, transfer babies to the new moss bed with sterilized tweezers.
3. In a next few weeks, continue daily misting, 1 misting per week w/fertilizer
4. After 2 months, transfer the container into my Exo Terra vivarium ( 85% humidity, t5 lights, I do have an area there under giant piece of wood with almost no air movement).
5. After about a year if they live ( knocks on wood), I plan to mount them - few on cork, few on wire net, few on hickory bark if I can find one and hope I can get few to grow and bloom.

I really appreciate everyone's help. These babies are becoming very dear to me and I am intended to give it all to make as many live as I can..

Pictures of deflasking enclosed . I know I may have overdid it with moss boiling/tank bleaching but I read that best deflasking success was due to proper medium sterilization..

Thank you!

very interesting, I hope they will do fine :)

I don't have much to say about this species, but I'm curious as to why you will be bleaching and transferrnig the plants to new media in 3 days? Seems like overkill to me. Also, using physan on such young seedlings can be dangerous, though there are those that vouche for it. I deflasked some Catt. violacea last week and have completely skipped the physan treatment for this reason.

With Ghost orchid, I have to have near 100% humidity and no air movement. This gives a high chance to mold growth which I hope I could prevent if I bleach the outer tank again and put fresh distilled water at the bottom.

As for new media, I read in 2 different places that: 1. do no use any fertilizer/chemicals on just deflasked ghost seedlings as its too much stress for them. 2. They need nutrients to grow. So I figured I would wait few days and give them the nutrients. I read someplace that someone was successful soaking moss in fertilizer and then placing seedlings on it so its not as harsh as fertilizing directly so I am thinking to give it a try. I am very worried that stuff will start molding/rotting with high light/humidity and no air movement so I am just replacing the medium since these are not rooting into medium anyways and sit on top of the moss.

This is my first ghost orchid experience so I am being extra cautious.

I did the spagnum moss soaking in a solution of watered fertilizer and so far I'm liking it. Just spraying with pure water keeps things simple and I like that!

As for being cautious, its probably a good idea considering the stagnant air situation needed for the ghosts. I was just curious. I'm guessing deflasking these guys is a bit different for most other orchids.

My problem is, there is not much info on these and some people are sucessfull growing these like weeds outside and some go all out replicating Everglade's climate. I am trying to do best with what Ive got which is a tropical vivarium but I am treating the seedlings like tube babies with no immune system ( which they pretty much are) and slowly introducing them to the outside environment. Fingers crossed..

Very cool!

Before reading further please note that I'm a newbie and my experience with deflasking is a total of 13 plants of various types in 4 mini flasks. They are still all with me after a few months though...

I started with microwaved media (sphagnum in my case). Mine went in a propogator which turned out to run at 100% humidity and basically zilch air movement. In spite of that I've had at most the odd spot of mold. In one case I did get a bit of mold on a root. Since I felt it was probably growing on a speck of leftover gel I decided to do nothing about that, and after a while it disapeared... I guess my feeling now is that mold could be a problem, but it doesn't have to be.

Since you have quite a few seedlings by the look of it, maybe you could divide them and try different culture? I'd include a 'leave well alone' group!

You are right, may be I should stop freaking out lol I just somehow feel so responsible to keep them all alive since the orchid is endangered in a wild. When I re-clean my setup this weekend, I will put a few in a separate container and will just stick it into my vivarium ( for better or for worse).

On a separate note, I did have a mold on a vanda root what I have in my vivarium and it disappeared on its own too in like 2 days. Strange..

What kind of propagator do you use, Rowangreen? I consider myself a noobie too :biggrin:

Just a cheap unheated one. I do have a heat mat to put under it but I've hardly used it.