Stu

Nice one, an orchid for 5p is good going! It's surprising how many of the common phalenopsis orchids you see reduced down in supermarkets/retail stores - they buy so many in bulk and can't keep them alive long enough. See the same thing with VFTs... think we've all rescued a couple of them over the years! ;-)

Thanks for the help Vince. Seems simple enough so should be able to slot it into my system! The latest erroneous readings show a temp of 15, which is not unusual for a terrarium range, but when it drops to this from a previous value of 35 and comes back up to 35 on the next reading, I know it is an error! At the same time, the RH reads crazy values such as 3500%. Therefore, it's probably easier to get the RPi to look at the RH readings and not log anything over 100%.

Welcome MG. It sounds as if you're off to a good start and know the basics. You may have to ring around a few garden centres and/or nurseries to try and find a good supply. The bigger, more independent garden centres usually stock at least some form of peat, but you'll struggle to find it at 'retail park' stores such as B&Q, Homebase etc. Shamrock peat is a known brand people usually find. Just try and check the bag description to make sure it's peat from sphagnum, not sedge peat, and has no additives/fertilisers added. Sand is also best bought from a garden centre/nursery as 'horticultural sand'. There is much less chance of it being contaminated with salts/additives, even if it does cost a little bit more. Builders sand is too soft anyway; you want a coarse grain to open up the peat mix a little. Hope that helps.

I can't vouch for methylated spirits on CPs but you can follow some good practice in order to keep it under control and try and fight it... Infected plants should be isolated as soon as possible - if they are near other plants, the infestation can spread and lose you the upper hand. Insecticides can help but don't expect miracle cures. You can safely use Provado Bug Killer or similar which does knock back the population a bit. It's not something I've tried, but some people submerge plants to drown the bugs. Obviously CPs lend themselves easily towards this treatment as they don't mind the occasional flood. Also, mealybugs enjoy the warm conditions of our greenhouses. You could try putting the pot(s) outside in the cool air and nighttime temp drops until you see improvement. Temperate CPs will be fine outside at this time of year.

Always good to see pics in the wild - thanks for sharing.

Great display guys - well done!

Thanks Vince. Will be an interesting challenge to see if I can optimise the substrate and conditions to increase the Ceph growth rate - they colour up lovely but still pretty slow growing! Also I need to keep an eye on temps - at the moment, in tank temp is topping 35°C at its highest. Don't really want it to get any higher and certainly not over 40°C! I should set up some coding on the Raspberry Pi to notify me somehow (email?) if temperatures hit a certain threshold value. Also I need to eliminate those erroneous sensor readings from the logging. I'm guessing they occur due to noise interference on the sensor/wires? Just some way for the code to ignore those crazy readings would be fine.

Ok, as promised here's a bit of detail about the plants that are currently in the terrarium and how they're doing. The bulk of them are plants that have got an upgrade from my old inferior terrarium, others that I have had under lights and such around the house and more recently some seeds to germinate. Firstly, some Nepenthes... N. cv. 'Bill Bailey' - very dark colouring now on the pitcher!... N. cv. 'Bloody Mary' - one of two stem cuttings really putting out new growth now... N. cv. 'Suki' - growing rapidly after a leaf jump... N. burbridgeae × campanula - after adjusting to the bright lights (leaves turning dark), it is now vigorously growing and putting out new pitchers... There are also a few different Cephalotus clones in there: Some great black colouration on this one, after being in the terrarium!... Also purpley-black colour on this one... One Utricularia at present - U. calycifida 'Lavinia Whateley', which is constantly flowering... The biggest and most pleasant surprise for me, since transferring plants from the old terrarium to this new one, has been the development of a first 'true' leaf on my Heliamphora nutans × heterodoxa. It's the only Heliamphora I own and I've had it for two years where it's put out only a few juvenile leaves previously... I discovered the terrarium can also be used as a very efficient way to germinate seeds. Having sowed some Sarracenia seed from 2015 a few weeks back, they have sat in my greenhouse under full sun and full water trays, but failed to show any life. Out of curiosity, I placed one pot into the LED terrarium and days later, they started to germinate!... The ones in the greenhouse are now slowly starting to wake up but I may have to swap them in and out of the terrarium to kick start each pot. Dionaea seeds from 2015 are also all germinating in the terrarium at present. That's the plant load at the moment - I will eventually move the seedlings out when they are bigger, and as the Nepenthes get too large, I will have to consider moving them, propagating them back to small versions, or more likely; decide I need another, yet bigger and more technical LED terrarium! ;-) For the future; I definitely need to get some more Heliamphora sp. and I am very interested in true miniature orchids (such as the ones @vincent grows) but have yet to obtain any. I would like to try a few mounted to the sides of the terrarium glass and see how they do in there.

Hi everyone, Now that my Terrarium is up and running I thought I should introduce it properly and show you the steps of the build along the way, which may help to inspire others to create similar projects. I used to have a small terrarium, which consisted of an old 45x30x25cm fish tank, lit by a 6400K 45W spiral compact fluorescent. It worked ok and the light certainly was powerful enough just to grow plants but it had problems with keeping the heat under control, keeping the water conditions stable and inevitably; I simply ran out of space! Last year I found a larger, second-hand fish tank and soon put together the idea of an LED build for a more hi-tech and efficient terrarium to allow my plants to really thrive. Here, finally is the result of my setup... It's a 75cm x 32cm x 39cm grow space that's warm and humid - in order for me to grow tropical species year round. I went with 55x 3W star LEDs, comprising 28x Cool white and 27x Warm white in equal spacing. The LEDs came from Michael Houlder at FutureEden (via his ebay shop). He's a great guy and helped me with my initial questions into LED wiring and electronics. I needed a heatsink to mount the LEDs to and also to form the entire hood of my terrarium. After a lot of searching around, I opted for a custom-made, black-annodised aluminium heatsink from Birmingham Aluminium (http://www.bal-group.com/home). They were very helpful and communicative to discuss my needs and clarified the thermal properties of the heatsink would successfully handle the proposed 55x 3W LED heat load. This was the single most expensive item in the entire build, but was critical to ensure I had a lasting terrarium with safe temperatures. The heatsink sits perfectly flush with the top, left and right sides of the tank, but has a very small 1cm air gap at the back - providing a small but useful exchange of fresh air as well as some space for any wiring to go into, or out of, the tank. Here's the heatsink, with a pair of T-bar handles installed so that I can lift the hood off (relatively) easily... The spacing for the LEDs was carefully checked using a handy PAR calculator via an excel spreadsheet. This had been set up for aquarium enthusiasts to calculate that the proposed spread of light would achieve a desired PAR level. If I remember correctly, I shot for a PAR around 2000, which is close to full sunlight (aim high, right!) LED's glued in place with thermal adhesive... With the spacing sorted, I then planned the wiring, making sure it was as neat and efficient as possible but still allowing for an even distribution of cool and warm white. The two 'sets' of LEDs are run on different drivers so I have the option of having the Warm and/or Cool white banks on at any one time. This also allows for future adjustment to light schedules and time overlaps. The wire used is silicon-sheathed which is heat proof and highly flexible. Planning the wiring.. Main wiring paths soldered in place... First test of the drivers and warm white LEDs... Wow, extremely bright and painful to look at. A stopped-down photograph shows the individual LEDs better than our blinded eyes can see.. Here is the hood in place with tested lights on - remember this is still only the warm white set (half the total)... Time to wire and test the Cool white set... All LEDs on together (camera stopped down to be able to see properly)... (The yellow wire is an earth - connected all the way to the plug earth and will be attached to the aluminium hood for safety in case of any wiring faults that may occur) Full brightness over the tank... My original ideal PAR calculations, incorporated the use of 30° lenses in order to direct the LED light efficiently downwards onto the plants. At this stage I hadn't installed them yet and it is quite clear that a lot of light is being wasted in all directions. The following composite photo shows the light spill of the LEDs by highlighting what little effect the main room light had when on or off! If you look at the carpet, you can see the bands of shadowing as the different rows of LEDs catch the edge of the sideboard... I glued each individual lens on as the holders they come with did not offer a good enough fit, especially with the soldered wires in place. I discovered that stacks of 2p coins formed the perfect sized weight whilst the epoxy was setting. (I opted for epoxy as the chemicals in superglue can apparently fog up the clear lenses!)... With all the lenses in place, the light spread is much more defined inside the tank with very little over spill outside.. Out of curiosity, I placed my phone into the bottom of the tank (35cm from the lights) and took a light level reading using it's inbuilt sensor... 38,000 lux; equivalent to sunlight! This was by no means a scientifically precise reading, but it was an excellent sign for me. Before filling up with water and introducing plants, I was concerned that all of my careful wiring and expenditure was at risk of corrosion from the high humidity conditions. Therefore I decided to fabricate a 'light shield' from 3mm perspex sheet. I checked the specifications and light transmittance is 92% - I could afford to lose 8% light in order to protect my hard work. The shield is simply a box-like structure of epoxy jointed perspex, mounted to the aluminium with clear silicone sealant. I left the threaded rods long, that come from the handles above and allowed them to pass through the perspex by drilling holes. This gives me options to attach anything to the rods in future, and they do not interfere with the light spread... Now the terrarium was safe and ready to start thinking about plants. I placed some eggcrate in the bottom, in order to allow me to have a 'reserve' of water in the bottom of the tank for stability, humidity and for the ultrasonic fogger to use... Here is the fogger in place. The eggcrate is elevated by a series of upturned 8cm net pots, which are rigid enough to hold whilst being fairly open to allow water to pass freely through... Following Tom Bennet's tutorials, I was able to introduce a Raspberry Pi system into the terrarium, constantly monitoring temp and humidity and allow for the use of autonomous mains sockets. Here is the 'powerhouse' (the raspberry pi)... It reads temperature and humidity via an AM2302 sensor, connected via CAT5 ethernet cable (placed well out of the way of the splashing ultrasonic fogger!!)... You can view live readings from my terrarium here... https://thingspeak.com/channels/149828 The fogger is connected to an Energenie RF controlled mains socket, which is triggered by the Raspberry pi every hour at one minute past, for a duration of six minutes (day and night). This gives a boost to humidity, yet is unobtrusive and dramatically extends the life of the disc in the ultrasonic fogger as it is effectively only operational for 144 minutes in a 24 hour period. The constant RH monitoring means that the raspberry Pi can be set to trigger the fogger based on a desired humidity range, but I don't think this is necessary for me at the moment. The last object I added to the system was a simple aquarium algae magnet, which sits permanently in the top left corner of the front glass. This allows me to wipe the front pane clear of any condensation if/when I want to be able to see clearly inside... That's the whole setup so far. It's been challenging at times but very fun and extremely rewarding to learn along the way. I am more than happy with the results and the effect already on the plants living inside. My next post will show the plants inside.

That's a good article Tropicat - the Sarracenia Northwest guys are a great, knowledgeable bunch. Hannah; it may well be getting too hot for too long - the drop in night temperature is important. Black pots per se are not an issue (I use black pots for my entire collection - even Darlingtonia in full sun) but may not be helping if already in a stuffy, hot environment. It'll probably be happier now on the new windowsill. The lids closing are a sign of low humidity. You could try the occasional hand misting and/or check the traps have fluid inside. If they are dry, you can safely add a tiny amount of rain water into them which may improve things.

Indeed, as long as the rhizome is not soft and brown (i.e., rotted), you should be able to stimulate new growth. I've regenerated quite a few plants from blind rhizomes over the years... they come on surprisingly quick.

You'll soon need a bigger greenhouse! Welcome aboard.

I suppose it is possible if overlying growth has squeezed the petiole, but sometimes the odd pitchers just die off as new growth replaces them. They can also die off rapidly if polluted with too much fertiliser or food that the pitcher cannot cope with.

Nice one Matt.

Not sure why that particular pitcher has decided to die back. Keep an eye on it but as the abundance of new leaf growth is healthy, I wouldn't worry too much. Incidentally, I grow mine always standing in water, sometimes almost up to the pot brim with the smaller pots! Dry conditions around the roots are far more detrimental than flooding.

Nice collection Hannah. I've had a few over the years... here's what I currently look after.. The love of small-scale spills over into similar projects too!..

Haha, that's awesome. Gotta love little shop of horrors

Nice photos of some lovely plants! Could you add the cultivar/clone names for each pic please?

Welcome to CPUK!

Was taken by surprise when I saw this sight in the greenhouse tonight... Seems the ants in my garden have gotten wise to a good source of free nectar, whilst playing with danger in the process!

Welcome aboard Michaela. Good to see more Utricularia growers about

Welcome to CPUK Hannah. Lots of useful information to be found here. Nice to see your collection already spanning different genera.

Great website Tom and good to see it developing fast. Your Raspberry Pi terrarium tutorial has been an invaluable source of help for me setting up my own. I definitely owe you a beer/coffee for that! The Nepenthes resources are also very interesting... very handy and easy to use tools for checking requirements.

Ha, sorry to say they are definitely not Drosera or Sarracenia, certainly not even a carnivorous genus! Does look remarkably like basil but I wouldn't risk ingesting something I didn't know. Incidentally, do the leaves have an aroma?

Same here. Started using it before forums allowed direct linking of pictures and has become the norm for me.