Orchidarium Planning

Sounds like the addiction seriously has you by the you-know-whats there my friend.

 

Lighting is the place to start. My orchidarium has a 6 x 39 watt t5 HO fixture with 4 6500K daylight bulbs and 2 10,000k "white" bulbs.

 

There are a few considerations, lighting being one of the most important.

First is that if you plan to warm the tank to greater temps than the ambient air temps, you will have condensation. You will have LOTS of condensation. This leads to a host of problems. Algae on the glass, constantly fogged up (i.e. opaque) glass, etc.

As for the mechanics of a tank, you have to balance light, heating/cooling, water, RH, and air flow. T5s are the way to go, IMO. Look for 24-30" reef fixtures. You'll want lamps in the 6500k range. Unfortunately, reefers use lamps outside of this range. www.firstrays.com sold me some appropriate length T5s (good customer service there, btw). Heating/cooling is another issue. If you don't plan to heat or cool the tank, expect that it will get about 3-5f above room temps because of lighting. Watering... do you want to automate the process? If so, I can point you toward a slough of resources. Otherwise, try to use RO or distilled water so as to prevent spotting on the glass. These will elach nutrients out of the plants, so make sure you use nutricote or something on mounts/in pots to replace what's lost. RH is pretty easy so long as you use a glass lid. Air flow is best achieved using a waterproof CPU fan. ADDA makes some pretty high quality fans that come in various voltage and CFM ratings. www.mouser.com carries a complete line of ADDA fans.

 

I stand corrected. Chris, in no uncertain terms, called the "leaching" of nutrients from the plant a "stupid idea". So, let's say this instead, if you use RO or distilled water, you will not be adding any nutrients to the plants. So you will need to make sure your plants get nutrients from another source. Like osmocote or something similar.

 

I said it was a "stupid myth" I was not trying to attribute the validity of the idea to any one person, as far as I can tell its a pretty widespread idea.

 

*it's

 

I also can't recommend FirstRays enough. He's a member here and contributes a lot of good info to the hobby.

I'll also second the use of the waterproof circ fans from mouser. I have been using one for over two years now with no sign of it stopping they are either made by ABBA or ADDA, I can't remember.

I used a thick acrylic lid slightly shorter than the length of the inside brace of the tank by about 8 mm, to allow vents on the sides as well. See pics.

 

I had the orchidarium lid drilled for MistKing mister bulkheads. There are only 2 nozzles in this pic, but I ended up needing six, three attached to each bulkhead.

 

And this is what I used to monitor temp and humidity in the orchidarium:

http://www.amazon.com/Crosse-Techno...H4/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1304531442&sr=8-10

 

RH = relative humidity.

www.mistking.com sells whole setups that include pretty much everything you'll need. If you want to tweak the system and add separate zones, etc., you'll need to tweak things even more. I would suggest the digital timer that mist king sells.

 

Do you have an RO system? If so, you can use the pressure tank, a splitter, and some solenoids to automate the watering. Might be cheaper than a pump system.

 

I would recommend you looking into low energy CFL instead of T5´s, look for Dulux 55W or 80W from Osram (or PL-L from Philips). I have documented my "display style" vivarium build in great detail on my blog, even though mine is a cool vivarium I am sure you can find some inspiration there. Here is a link straight to the category for the build. Good luck!