Sundew Terrarium

[CPSINC]

i will be getting a 5 gallon fish tank to use as a terrarium and will set it up with some sundews.thing i need to know is should i use the preferred peat/perlite mixture or something different.and also about lighting.should a regular top tank light like the one that comes with the fishtank do?


all help is much appreciateed guys and gals

 

[swords]

I'll tell you, if you're gonna make this a "classical terrarium" where the plants are all planted in a bed of planting mix instead of being left in their own pots you should use only Long Fibered Sphagnum because it's been my experience that using milled peat or sphagnum peat will cause you to empty the tank out within a few months as peat begins to decompose and smell just horrid - like rotten eggs! LFS does not do this, it just smells like LFS and eventually turns green and starts to grow (the stuff on the very bottom will decompose and become sphagnum peat after a long time.

As far as lighting for a 5 gallon goes, I'd use at least two 12" flourescents (wal mart sells 12" tubes and fixtures) one cool white and one warm white will aproximate balanced sunlight. if you tape tinfoil all around the tank (on the front glass where you'll be looking in tape only the top so you can flip up the tinfoil when you wanna look at em) then you can get a "light chamber" effect and increase the light that hits the plants by 25% or more. It really does help when you're growing plants entirely under artificial lighting. I always thought my uncle was crazy for taping up his terrariums til I tried it and saw that it does indeed help give the plants more light and show off better pigments.

good luck!

 

[CPSINC]

2 12 inch bulbs or 2 12 watt bulbs?

 

[swords]

Standard flourescent tubes are 10 watts per linear foot:
12" 10 Watts
24" 20 watts
36" 30 watts
48" 40 watts
96" 80 watts

hope that helps!