What's new
TerraForums Venus Flytrap, Nepenthes, Drosera and more talk

Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

An interesting idea I came about for my Lowland Terrarium

Far as I know it has never been done but my Lowlanders seem to Love it! all of them are having growth spurts atm.

The increased vegetation seems to make for a more stable humidity since the aquatic plants are not efficient at holding in water so they seem to aspirate much more heat and humidity which in turn helps make for a more stable environment allowing me to run my fogger hardly at all which is the ultimate goal to create something more stable and less dependent on machinery to maintain. Humidity goes through peaks and dips when the fogger comes on and goes off which also ends up water-logging the media requiring more air circulation. Now the media is great, the humidity is great and the plants are great. The Nepenthes do not partake of the water supply the aquatic plants use, they are isolated from it so they get the benefits from the vegetation without the drawback of invasive roots etc... Beauty of the aquatic plants is there is little to no algae bc they block the light and eat the same nutrients the algae needs to live and they oxygenate the water. The coverage of open water is about 85-90% but soon it will be 100%. lastly, it is hard to see but there is a submersible heater in there maintaining a water temp of 75 degrees(which was already in there for the nepenthes) which the aquatic plants also help to stabilize temp fluctuations too. Far as the aquatic plants they are all floaters so only maintenance they need is a couple drops of water soluble fert every now and then.

lmk your thoughts on my strange setup.

102_0254.jpg
 
Did I really send you that much Ludwigia? Once the aquatics start growing above the water line you'll see even better results, which won't take long.
 
^ no another person gave me some water lettuce and I found a local(in state) place to give send me some water hyacinth and water poppy since it was going to die anyway. I have your plants propagating/acclimating in an overwinter terrarium i have setup for my non-temperate drosera.
 
I thought it looked different. I'm happy to hear that this idea is working.
 
Most of my nepenthes tanks end up looking like this, just because I have aquatic plants I can't bear to throw away so I toss them in. It does seem to be true that the more plant mass there is, the more water is respirated into the air. But honestly the submersible heater is probably doing most of the work for you. I had a tank I had trouble keeping above 70 degrees and above 60% humidity. A submersible heater set to 73 brought it up to 75 degrees and 80% humidity. It's indispensable for tanks that aren't heated well by lighting, I think.
 
^ I use the submersible to provide a constant baseline/nighttime temp and the lighting just acts to increase the temp for the daytime so there is only about 7-10 degrees of temperature variation between day and night by design. IMO the aquatics seem to really help in the aspect of providing a humidity constant which the nepenthes really seem to appreciate over the peeks and dips caused by having the fogger cycle on and off all the time(and i appreciate it bc the amount of maintenance needed for the media is practically non-existent now). Speaking of which it only comes on for 3h a day split into 6 30 minute segments as opposed to being on 12h a day to coincide with the lighting and an additional 2h at night. Far as the submersible and humidity...for me yes and no. as long as there is a decent seal on your terrarium and there is plenty of water in it then humidity isn't really an issue. My old nepenthes terrarium would maintain 70% d and 75% N on it's own without assistance but the sub heater does help to increase that number by about 5% i'd say. For my needs the submersible heater's main purpose is water temperature/terrarium temperature maintenance over anything....that's the key to get the aquatics to spread like wildfire too. :)

Someone asked for me to provide another pic with it zoomed out a little so I am happy to oblige as you can see the baramensis approves. lol(and yes i am in the process of moving my fixture further away):

102_0304_zpse82dfcf5.jpg
 
Last edited:
Back
Top