Inspired by the new 3ft tank, I revisited my original build and made some upgrades. It has been doing pretty well but I feel the orchid growth is a little slow and humidity and airflow may be the problem. The humidity had always sat around 55-65% and i was never happy with the position of the fan which i felt was too little air movement or the perspex lid.
I pulled out the old lid and siliconed in 2 pieces of 3mm glass I had left over. I then drilled holes for the
misting nozzles and also an 80mm hole for the fan to sit flush on the glass, I then drilled 2 more holes next to the fan.
My idea was to enclose the fan in a perspex box (an idea seen on the Dendroboard forum) and draw air from the tank through the 2 holes and back down through the fan.
I cut the box out of the old lid and hot glued the fan into place and the box together. I came up a bit rough but it works great and the air movement is much better, the tank is brighter and the humidity is sitting at 80%.
A happy upgrade that I hope the orchids will enjoy
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Ive also added a strip of black tap along the side wall to shield the top orchids from a bit of the LEDs to see if they respond better to the lower light levels.
---------- Post added at 10:01 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:35 PM ----------
and some pics of the tank at the 6 month mark
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Its quite hard to get a good photo of the tank, it sort of has to be viewed on both sides for it to look its best but the distortion messes it up. Ill try with something other than my iPhone soon.
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