Dying lepanthes in terrarium? slow decline.

[RandomGemini]

I think only watering them with distilled water may be your problem. They need nutrients to grow. I do not fertilize my lepanthes, but instead I water them with with tap water once a week. I can see using only distilled water in your misting system, that makes sense, but the plants need some source of nutrients and you say they are blooming constantly. That makes me think that they are using up all of their resources on blooms and not much on growing new leaves...

Just some food for thought.

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[harpspiel]

Originally Posted by Paul

Actually, dark green leaves do not indicate exposure to very high light levels ... Quite the opposite, in fact. Or were you referring to the red on the leaves? If the latter, then I definitely agree.

I, too, have issues with Leps and so will be very interested in watching for the advice this thread draws.

Lots of people insist that orchid leaves get lighter and more yellow under high light. This just isn't true of all orchids - some go directly to a purple/red cast, including some Phals and notably the species I mentioned earlier, Pleurothallis prolifera.

I would therefore qualify my earlier statement and say that deep, "glowing" green leaves indicates low light, light yellow green leaves can indicate higher light (but can also indicate a number of problems), and in some orchids a deep purple/red tone indicates high light.

For instance, this image is from a recent thread about a Pleurothallis prolifera grown in very high light:

Pleurothallis prolifera

I'm not growing mine quite so bright, but the poster was happy with its conditions.

Anyway in vraev's case, I was seeing lots of deep reds and purples on the leaves. Also, in order to be healthy (and in most species/hybrids, to get brightly colored pitchers) nepenthes needs a whole lot of light.

[vraev]

I just got a few new lepanthes plants again and I am now trying out a separate tank with an open tank. L. telipogoniflora has blood red leaves again...but L. calodycton has made two new leaves but they look almost pale white. Is that ok? or need to lower the plant from the light?


Guys...what fertilizer do you recommend? Should I get osmocote or something? I never typically use ferts as my plants get insects as ferts and need to be grown typically without ferts. But in this new tank, its predominantly orchids..so don't have to worry about the ferts contaminating my CP media.

[Ordphien]

I hope it goes better for you.
I'm still trying to get through my bottle of growmore. Pretty good fertiliser but not what I want anymore. I bought it in the very beginning of me purchasing orchids.

I like the results people get with a combo of kelpmax and msu.

[RandomGemini]

The light looks too high to me. I grow these in the bottom of my terrarium with the CFL in there only on for about 9 hours. 10 hours was too much for my low light plants in there.

[vraev]

hmm...my lighting is on from 9AM to almost 9:30 pm at night. lol!

Hmm... I guess I'm going to lower all the plants if I can. Unfortunately, may have to rip out the mounted ones. which is really hard considering how dense the tank is.



Here is a second tank I made ... dedicated to orchids mostly. Lets see how it goes.

The ecotech fixture has tremendous spotlight effect and nothing was able to grow properly outside the beam of light. But under the beam, even VFTs were blood red. So clearly the light has the required wavelength coverage. But to fill in the outside areas, I need to get supplementary fixtures.





And here is an experiment... could blow up and cost quite a bit if it fails...but if it works...would look awesome.





cheers

V

[piti]

Hi, I don't know if you still need help, but here's my input:
I am pretty much sure you got too much light! Your tentaculata and teli shows that. I had the same issue when I was starting with Lepanthes genera with L. telipogoniflora. Initially I had it circa 20 cm under lights. It was producing new growths and flowering at first, but then started to decline. I put id 30 cm lower but it haven't recovered, although it's doing better. I bought other telis since then and I mounted them 40 cm under lights. They are doing great! A lot of new growth and proliferous blooms. A little of pink is ok on the leaves, but not blood red. Especially new growths can be pinkish, but as they mature they should turn green. In the attachment one of my telis. Hope that helps.

[vraev]

Originally Posted by piti

Hi, I don't know if you still need help, but here's my input:
I am pretty much sure you got too much light! Your tentaculata and teli shows that. I had the same issue when I was starting with Lepanthes genera with L. telipogoniflora. Initially I had it circa 20 cm under lights. It was producing new growths and flowering at first, but then started to decline. I put id 30 cm lower but it haven't recovered, although it's doing better. I bought other telis since then and I mounted them 40 cm under lights. They are doing great! A lot of new growth and proliferous blooms. A little of pink is ok on the leaves, but not blood red. Especially new growths can be pinkish, but as they mature they should turn green. In the attachment one of my telis. Hope that helps.

Thank you so much for your input. Sorry for the late reply. Didn't notice it. You are right. I will move the egg crate suspension lower from the lights. Hopefully that should help. I think also the deformed growth issue may be due to ferts? I remember reading that some nutrition deficiencies can cause deformed curling growth. I am already starting to notice that in some of the lepanthes I bought last year. Considering I water with pure distilled water...I think I really need to go get some ferts. Planning on getting maxsea 16-16-16. Should that be good for a good drenching fert for these plants?

thanks

V

[estación seca]

I don't grow these either, but all the photos looked to me like they were burning in far too much light. And as for fertilizer, with struggling plants I would only change one thing at a time. So lower the light levels for a few weeks, and see what happens. Only then consider fertilizing. And when you start fertilizing, start with very tiny amounts. If your plants aren't accustomed to any at all, you might burn them with amounts normal for other people's growing conditions.

[Leafmite]

I am trying to get my Lepanthes telipogoniflora to recover from an unhappy shipping experience. It has one leaf. :|