Interesting mixes. I notice that none of them include any peat. Do Heli's have some aversion to it?Ron, almost every pot seen in the pic has a different soil mix.
My favorites are..
a. Pure cypress bark (relatively fine)
b. 7p cypress bark 3p LFS
c. 1p cypress bark, 1p APS, 1p LFS
My current favorite is option C.
Your basement seems to get a bit cooler than mine in winter (except for my back room (aka - root cellar - which gets into the 40's)).My rack is located in my basement and has continous cross ventilation via computer fans. Fans, humidifier and lights are all on the same timer. Relative humidity stays over 75% with >90% being common. Temperatures are seasonal with summers being in the low to mid 70's and winters being in the high 50's.
No day/night variance.
You say no day/nite variance so the fan(s) offset the heat gain from the lights? I find I typically get a 10-15*F day/nite variance from the lights & I would've guessed that the rack of reflector T-5's would have gotten even more... (at least w/o fans)
All very good info - thanks! My one Heli that is doing 'OK' is in 100% LFS and is fed regularly. I originally would just fill the pitchers every 2-3 weeks w/ 1/4 strength miracid. In the last month, I've added some WFFs / carpenter ants. It is still very slow to add pitchers. How often do you see new pitchers emerging?Helis are hungry buggers.... feed them often (every 2-4 weeks) and feed them well, I use fish pellets... When young I make a slurry of ground up fish flakes with water and use a syringe. There is a pretty good lag between feeding and seeing results... so keep the faiith. Once it starts you will definitely know it. You can use orchid mix in the pitchers... but this requires a little experience... so go slow, once you see signs of overfeeding... you are past the point of no return and death will likely occur. All you can do at that point is flush everything and hope for the best
Very helpful - thanks again.I consider feeding and trichoderma to be very beneficial to good heli (and especially cephs) success, but others will disagree... C'est la vie
Lighting is 6, 54w 5000k 85cri T5 bulbs with 95% efficient reflectors on a 18/6 photoperiod (summer, 12/12 winter)