Starting bowl terrarium, have a few questions

[veefour]

Hello all,

I am pretty new to the hobby and have been lurking here for a few months.

I am starting an 18" diameter (middle) bowl terrarium for moss and mini orchids, and I was wondering if anyone has opinions on if this setup would work:

1. A drainage layer of light weight rocks (made of recycled glass) with some charcoal.

2. A divider to prevent debris from falling down.

3. Large pieces of petrified wood and a piece of driftwood with smaller light weight rocks around them to fill in space and balance the petrified/drift wood.

4. A layer of Hygrolon covering the tiny rocks for moss and mini orchids (would rest on top to be the "ground"). Also some spots of Hygrolon on the drift/petrified wood for more moss/mini orchids.

I have a glass lid with vent holes and a computer fan to provide air circulation.

Do you think this would work?
Would you thread some Hygrolon through to the drainage layer so that it wicks to the ground layer?
Would you put a hidden access tube so you could drain the water?

Any advice would be appreciated.

On a side note, is there a reason I cannot see pictures unless they are attachments in threads? What could be one of my greatest resources (TOMMYMIAMI's posts), I cannot see any pictures. I am guessing this is user error on my part?

Thanks,
Dan

[Leafmite]

What exactly do you want to grow in this?

[veefour]

Sorry, that is a good question.

As of now, I am planning Riccardia chamedryfolia for the "moss". The orchids are all high humidity mini orchids and will require similar light. I have a list of 75 to choose from that I weened down from a list I created of all the orchids that have worked in terrarium/vivariums that I found here and dendroboard. I have not ordered any yet, but they include: Bulbophyllum, Pleurothallis, Stelis, etc.

[Leafmite]

Your project sounds really nice and I cannot wait to see it!

I cannot really offer you advice. My orchid bowl is so small that it isn't really the same thing. I use lava rock as the bottom layer, a bit of NZ moss over that and then the orchids are planted in the moss. A different type of moss has been spreading and making a nice, green carpet. I have Lepanthopsis Astrophora 'Stalky', Angraecum distichum and a Playstele (?) planted in the bowl, doing well.

When I have set up bowls for other plants, I usually use red lava rock as the bottom (but LECA can do) and cover that with newspaper cut to size to keep out the dirt. The bottom acts as a reservoir.

[u bada]

Some thoughts from my experience... I've experimented with all sorts of setups...

For bottom media, it almost doesn't matter what you use as long as it's inorganic, but for the second substrate layer you don't want something it in to wick up to wood and mosses and then to orchids... in that order. hygrolon would work find, but also sphag is fine too...

main point here is water will collect at bottom and you want that water to rise back up into mosses and plants, otherwise it can sit at the bottom with the inorganic media and just breed things that may not help anything and contribute to bad fungus or bacteria... The light and fan will help contribute transpiration and evaporation to keep water to a minimum sitting at the bottom... but depending on how often you end up watering, you may eventually end up having to siphon water out from the bottom somehow. My current setups are for growing and not as vivarium setups and because of this ease of maintenance is essential... for vivarium setups, other plants like mosses and other things help distribute water evenly throughout but in combination with airy water wicking substrate... but leaving a hole or point maybe where it's just inorganic substrate may be a good to be able to siphon water out even if you do that 1x month

Also watering... thinking of it now, I do have a bowl setup with mosses, ferns and a jewel orchid, with a lid held just partly ajar. no fan, but one LED light. Kinda newish, but so far not bad. anyway, only water 1x week max, but has been more like 1x per 10 days since cooler... The other tanks are watered once or twice a day and they're outfitted with fans and have higher light...

about the wood, the wood can rot if sitting directly in water, so I'd keep those pieces suspended from inorganic substrate base...

oh, and orchids... some orchids do much better than others so worth looking at the various lists on here that people have reported have done well for them in similar setups... of course you can also ask here...

[estación seca]

First, Welcome to the Orchid Board!

There is a limit to how many photos people can have here. Tommy may have deleted older photos to make room for newer ones.

There's no point to using charcoal in the bottom layer. Chunks of charcoal don't do anything because the exposed surface area is very small. Powdering would expose much more surface area, but once the biding sites on the charcoal surface fill with things, the charcoal would need to be replaced. This won't happen. It is far better to make sure excess water is removed regularly than to depend on charcoal purifying the bottom layer. To this end many people put some kind of tube in an unobtrusive spot so they can siphon out the water in the bottom layer.

There are chunks of something in the bottom layer only to keep the growing layer out of any water that accumulates. If you are careful not to let water accumulate, you don't need the bottom layer. But most people use it because it saves a lot of time. Using chunks of a very uniform size makes this layer much easier to handle. That's why many people use glass marbles of the same size. If your recycled glass chunks are of very similar size they should work fine.

Many people use a layer of landscape fabric between the bottom reservoir and the next layer. This stuff is sold at garden centers to put on the ground under gravel or mulch as a weed blocking layer. It is plastic, so it doesn't degenerate. It allows water to penetrate. It has small pores, so soil particles don't fall through into the reservoir layer. Small squares of it also make good inside hole covers for non-orchids in pots.

Other people, instead of a fabric layer, put a layer of sphagnum directly over the reservoir layer. It also prevents soil from falling through, and wicks up the water.

I personally would avoid wood, because it will rot and fungus will grow on it. There are lots of nice porous rocks for orchids and moss to climb on. Still, lots of people do use wood with good results.

Make sure your moss and your orchids will be happy at similar pH. A lot of mosses prefers alkaline environments, and most mini orchids want things a little acidic. Orchids may need more fertilizer than do most mosses. Think about how you want to water the plants.

Air circulation is more important to some plants than to others. I don't know much about this, so other people might be able to offer suggestions when you specify plants.

You probably found that there is a thread here for terrariums. In the left vertical menu, select Forums, then scroll down to Terrarium Gardening.

[veefour]

I really appreciate the input. I guess I am going to try to figure out a way to put some tubing diagonally so that the access is along the back edge of the surface and can still reach the water layer. Along with threading enough hygrolon to the surface to keep everything moist. The project may be a little harder, but I am glad I asked.


https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

Here is the spreadsheet of all of the orchids people claim have worked in terrariums. There are probably a few errors in it. I have not verified these, and almost all of the info about the species is from orchidspecies.com. If anyone uses this, I would still research the species you plan on using, because I found information elsewhere that had different light requirements for lots of the species when I was narrowing down my list.

[estación seca]

You never mentioned a light source, nor the temperatures the terrarium will experience. These variables are more important than anything else.

You're going to have to figure out how much light you have. Some of the plants in your list need nearly full sunlight, and it would be very hard to get that in a terrarium. Artificial lighting can raise temperatures inside a terrarium.

It's not a good idea to begin with plants having temperature requirements far from your terrarium location.

Another way to approach it would be to look at what other people have grown in similar terraria, get some easy-to-grow species, and make your mistakes on harder-to-kill plants. Then branch out into other things.

Some of the plants on your list need near-full sunlight, and I would not think to grow them in a terrarium without some extremely bright lights. You probably don't want to start with plants like this. (Cattleya, Laelia, Tolumnia, anything "bright.")

So, tell us your temperatures and how much light it will get.

[veefour]

The light will be a 12W LED above the bowl. The temp is just house temps (65-75) That was just a master list I started with. I have weened it down to ones that require 500-2500 fc (have not decided which level I want to do quite yet, but the selections will be consistent). I think I will have a little variation between the top and bottom of the bowl, but I plan on starting slow and only a few plants to make sure I get the lighting correct.

[estación seca]

I suspect that lamp will give you 500-1000 fc at best. Achieving 2500 fc in a bowl requires an awful lot of light power. It looks like an experiment, not a decorative feature.

For those temperatures, look for cool to intermediate plants.

Within those light and temperature parameters, there are a lot of Pleurothallis alliance plants you should be able to grow. Others should step in, because I don't have cool to intermediate temperatures.