Trichoglottis pusilla in terrarium? - Orchid Board

Fishkeeper · #1 04-12-2021, 02:11 PM

I'm going with an automatic mister because I have chronic fatigue issues, and difficulty keeping up with frequent/daily tasks long-term. I do enjoy watering my plants (miscellaneous houseplants), and there's definitely something satisfying about misting a terrarium. But I really don't want to have a bunch of things die again because I get hit with a bad batch of circumstances and don't have the spoons to water things.

I don't have the terrarium set up yet, I'm researching while things are in the mail, so I don't have exact growing conditions. I'm aiming for intermediate/warm temps (we'll see where things end up falling), high humidity, generally a moist environment, and... whatever light level winds up working, I'm getting an adjustable fixture. Probably moderate light with shaded areas, micro-minis don't seem to like high light.
Definitely a fan on constantly for circulation, but only to move the internal air around. This is going to be a Zilla terrarium, which has a vent low across the front, and a screen top. I'll probably cover most of the screen top, but not all of it.

I still have to figure out what to do with the bottom. I definitely want a couple pockets of soil for terrestrial plants (micro begonias, anyone?), and some areas of leaf litter. I might just have an open pool of water across some of the bottom, if I can get it to look nice. I don't think sphagnum moss would like to be grown next to soil, unfortunately, it's fussy about nutrients. Maybe I can get it to grow up on some rocks? I do want to try for a moss-covered rock with some pinguiculas (butterworts- little rosette carnivorous plants, amazing gnat-eaters), like how they grow in the wild.

I'm not really looking for specific advice, since I don't yet have specific conditions set up. I'm mostly trying to figure out if this is a plant that can do well with daily misting and no rest period. If so, I can fiddle with lighting, positioning, and amount of moisture retention until I get it happy. If not, it would probably never be happy in this setup. But it sounds like it's worth a try- thanks for the advice!

I do have some experience with slow adjustments and observing things. Aside from having grown orchids and other things in the past, I have a small reef tank right now. I've set it up so that it only needs feeding every few days, as the only fish are very, very small, and are fed entirely off of the crustaceans they can catch. The corals and hermit crabs don't mind being fed on an intermittent and uneven schedule, as long as it averages out. The hermits have other things to eat, algae and gunk, and the corals don't need much food at all. They just grow best with food.
Corals and orchids have some similarities. They both take a while to react to things, and do best with slow changes. There's a really unfortunate thing that corals can do, and I wonder if orchids do as well, which is delayed reaction. If you have, say, a deficiency in some nutrient, it can take corals two or three weeks to start showing signs of it. So you have to figure out what happened two or three weeks ago to upset them. And some corals don't show that something is wrong until they're in serious distress. Then, when you fix the problem, it can take another two or three weeks for the solution to sink in as well. If a coral is in bad enough shape, it can die in that time, even if conditions are now perfect. They're just kinda lagging. And if you want slow animals, well, that's what a coral is.
At least with orchids, we don't tend to bring in rocks from the outside that can have unknown pests. Live rock (rock that's been in the ocean for a few years to get covered in creatures) is an important part of a reef tank, because it brings in beneficial bacteria, helpful algae to outcompete the dangerously fast-growing pest algae, and a massive assortment of detritivores and other scavengers. Biodiversity is the cornerstone of a healthy reef. Sometimes, though, that biodiversity likes to nibble your corals.