Pleurothallid focused terrarium - Orchid Board

pleurothallid · #1 02-14-2011, 07:27 PM

I'm not much of a forum person, but since I've used this as a resource on and off I thought this design may be of some interest to people. This is a terrarium I built the end of August 2010 and it has been growing in the past few months. The concept is simple and I wanted to grow a large amount of very small orchids. The terrarium is glass with the top half glass, half acrylic (so I could drill it), the rest of the glass is 3/8" with 1/4" doors.

The gadgetry is fairly simple, consisting of a misting system with 10 heads on it (Mistking-- the only type I use), 3 closed-circuit computer fans, and 2 x 96 watt compact fluorescents 3' fixtures. The dimensions of this is 3' long, 2' deep and 4' high, though with the stand it sits just around 6' 8" tall, which coincidentally is pretty much as tall as I am, so I can view it standing up and see it all. I can't recall the final list but there's at least 30 species of nearly all Pleurothallid alliance orchids in it, nearly all have bloomed so far.

Just this weekend I started planting a second that's a foot shorter, but it's easier to get the light and misting more even with the dimensions. That also features nearly all extremely small orchids. I've got a few branches where the idea is to have moss cover them and barely have the orchid leaves above the moss, only blooms will emerge.

The system is automated so I only have to fill the water reservoir every 10 days or so, and ever 2 weeks I have to empty the drainage buckets. I spend most of my summer out of the country, so things have to be automated as much as possible to maximize the chance of things surviving.