Mini Cool Terrarium (ok, it's a start...)

[Paul Mc]

After having read a thread about constructing a terrarium on little money, I decided to go with some of the suggestions. I noticed this morning that 3 more leaves of my Porroglossum are dying, signaling once more that it is unhappy with me. It was a heart beating/emergency kinda situation, lol...

Sorry for this being so long guys.

I am attempting to construct a cool growing mini terrarium. So far, I have a 2.5 gallon fish tank, an ultrasonic fogger placed in a deep cottage cheese container filled with water, and two cool and humid loving plants in it. I also bought a thermometer and a hygrometer for inside of the tank.

I have not moved the tank to it's final location as I wanted to run it by you guys to see what you think and any suggestions you might have.

Sitting out of the direct sunlight, it is reading about 70 degrees. I have the timer set to 30 minute cycles with the fogger. The humidity goes from about 40 to 80 in that time frame. I put a half piece of glass covering on it to see if that would help regulate the himidity any better, but am afraid of closing it up completely. Also, the backdoor to the kitchen is open and it's quite windy today so I'm not sure the change in humidity and temperature is accurate at this point.

I know I still need to get some kind of fan, and was hoping to find a mini clip fan to fasten to the side. Apparently, it's not the season for fans yet after having tried multiple places to find one.

The other plant is a Tristella gemmata in case you were wondering.






I think I would like to mount the orchids on something as opposed to leaving them in pots, but I will have to do more research. I don't know how to, nor what is appropriate to mount on, i.e. are the reptile things sold at PetSmart suitable (fake or otherwise).

I purposefully bought small as I have very limited space for something like this. I thought I might want a size larger, but I noticed my Scaphosepalum is growing 3 new leaves so it must be happy where it's at. The Trisetella I've only had for a few months and it hasn't grown anything new, but it also has not had any leaf drop. Thought I would give it a whirl in a terrarium to see what would happen.

Oh, and the Trisetella is barely sitting above sphag while the Porroglossum is situated in sphag. Should I remove the sphag or leave it?