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Terrarium cover material

  • #21
Holes? Nah. The light is doing fine. The plants are responding well enough so I don't see the need. But interesting idea though.
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  • #22
Interesting idea for the top. I have been playing with this idea for quite awhile, the "perfect" top. I agree, with a mister running, holes speed up evaporation, in my experience.

I believe also that until the plasitic starts to cloud, the lighting remains peak, assuming ballast is good, tubes are new, etc. There are many factors to consider when looking lighting.

The best system I found is one that helps to maintain set levels of humidity and temperatures while being able to provide healthy lighting for the plants. Without a spectrum light analyser or light meter, to test the existing lighting, we have to watch our plants and let them tell us what they need.
 
  • #23
I wouldn't worry too much about the lost light. You'll lose about 4% due to surface reflections.
 
  • #24
[b said:
Quote[/b] (Dyflam @ Jan. 13 2005,8:40)]I wouldn't worry too much about the lost light. You'll lose about 4% due to surface reflections.
What if it's very humid and water forms on the glass? Surely this also reflects light more?
 
  • #25
Joe,
You are right, my "plant room" is like a large grow chamber. I recently increased my humidification from one ultrasonic humidifier running 24 hours/day by adding an additional 3 cool-mist humidifiers, also running 24 hours/day.

I have often kept some of my plants inside Ziploc® bags. Despite the lower light reaching plants due to my keeping them inside Ziploc® bags, the increased humidity inside these bags had greatly boosted the growth of said plants. So, several years later I finally figured out that, maybe a little more humidity in the growing room might help – and it does. Now the lowest humidity levels in the grow room are in the 40%’s instead of just 20%’s and the plants are already responding.

Perhaps how I indulge my plants might seem a little extravagant, but I do run my lights during the night in order to avoid having the heat generated by the ballast cause the need to run the air conditioner. In effect using electricity ($$) to create heat and then using more electricity ($$) to remove the heat produced by the first use of electricity. Likewise, I resist using electricity ($$) to create light needed to produce healthy, vigorous plants and then to do anything to prevent 100% of that light from reaching the plants it was produce for.
 
  • #26
Not sure if this is the same thing as plexiglass but what about lexan?
 
  • #27
I would go with glass. You can use windex on glass. You will have to get special cloth to clean plexi since it scratches so easily.
 
  • #28
[b said:
Quote[/b] (Phyrex @ Jan. 13 2005,3:02)]
[b said:
Quote[/b] (Dyflam @ Jan. 13 2005,8:40)]I wouldn't worry too much about the lost light. You'll lose about 4% due to surface reflections.
What if it's very humid and water forms on the glass? Surely this also reflects light more?
Water on the surface changes everything. In that case it won't matter what the material is. I guess my point was not much light is absorbed in the material.
 
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