Muel

I'll try get down. It's probably my turn to drive...

Ah nice I'll get on it then Manders :)

Ok so I bought this on a whim a while back and I was wondering at what point shall I unflask it? Cheers, Sam

Yeah licenses are only valid at the address you get them for so moving house would mean applying loads of times and the councils make it extremely expensive and awkward to do. They were very grumpy You really need training to safely work with them. Similar to me then with the moving; I've decided no more aquariums or pets until I actually buy a house. Also I have to be really selective about what plants I buy too

Yeah live food sucks, so much easier if you can just either buy your veg from the supermarket or just get a freezer full of frozen food for them. Yeah I had 2, they were quality but I couldn't keep them due to moving house. Moving home regularly doesn't mix well with hobbies like growing cps and keeping strange pets!

Ah nice I do like day geckos. I think after my finaly tokay dies I'll stick to a pet that doesn't require livefood. Tokays are grumpy but defo handleable, you just don't have to make them feel restricted or really stroke them unless you want a bite lol/ The snakes were puff adders.

You could always just pull that bit off at the base and potentially have 2 plants? I'd probably leave it and see what happens myself.

Quick update. This thing has gone insane flowering this year. It's been pretty much non-stop. Still kicking out buds now. I'm getting fed up of my bedroom smelling musty now though so I might cut the rest of the buds off yet

Can't remember it was from somebody on this forum probably 2009/2010 at a guess. No idea if it actually is "black beauty" or whatever but it seems a nice plant anyway

Ok so this was my last remaining Nep from years ago from before I got rid of my original collection of plants. It's been living on my girlfriends mum's kitchen windowsill for some years now. It grows pretty slowly but it seems happy. It's always sticky with dew and it's pretty dark for how much light it gets. It's potted in orchid bark and watered about once a week sometimes less.

Walstad tanks are the way to go. 0 maintenance pretty much. Nice tanks guys. You got any floating plants in there?

Awesome pics!

Is that T-Rex hollowed out with substrate inside it? Looks quality either way haha

That's a lot of mantids I used to keep a few different fish tanks too. The last lot were all Walstad method natural tanks but when I was younger I had community tanks but they were a bit like concentration camps for fish as I was a lot less patient back then! I really want to have a nice big planted tank again but when you move around a lot it's a nightmare for keeping anything big

What type do you have? I haven't got any pics of when I kept a few but I had African flower, orchid and double-shield mantids. I intend on getting a nice Idolomantis diabolica at some point in the future as they are stunning!

Ok so having moved around a lot I now only have a very old grumpy Tokay gecko to keep me company but I found a few old pics I thought I could share

That is a whopper Fred. Theres one that covers the end of the greenhouse here. Not a massive one though.

I put a load of D. spatulata seeds in with the cephs in their new tub tish

Well that sounds worrying I thought sphagnum was supposed to be alright as it degraded. The stuff in mine is dried underneath and live on the top. I'll defo have to keep an eye on it then.

I was going to wait until it grows fresh Fred and I reckon I'll be having to squash the moss down before long. I can cope until then I'll just try not to look at it . I used to grew the origional baby Ceph I got all that from in an undrained fish bowl with just sphagnum in it so it's done alright in those conditions so far. Like I said I may well decide to put holes in the bottom and wack the whole thing in a tray. It's also a very perlite dominant mix it's in so I'm not too worried about the moss underneath breaking down and causing too many issues. We shall see I guess... I'm more worried about what I'm going to do come winter as this is the first time I have put Cephs outside. I reckon it's lining up to be a cold one this year so I'll probably end up bringing them inside.

Oops didn't even notice replies on this topic haha sorry. I just water mine as it's a houseplant about once a week. I water a bit less in the winter, maybe every other week but I don't really worry about it much. Heres a pic of the flowers this year. The smell seems worse this time round too, though that could be to do with the volume of flowers it keeps chucking out! It's been flowering for aaaages now. Every time one drops off another is ready to open.

Ok so a couple of pics of the 2 baby VFTs I bought at the start of the year. They've grown quite nicely in a mix of larch needles and dried sphagnum moss. I will be using pine/larch needles again in the future I think :)

Ok so I decided to scrap the terrarium. The algae and the fact that I don't have an awesome light unit lying around to put on it plus the fact that I have limited space for the moment all annoyed me so I ended up banging them in the greenhouse. Link below to new topic. http://www.cpukforum.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=53976

Ok so I changed my mind on the terrarium I put these into earlier in the year and wacked the Cephs in this tub in the greenhouse. It's just a big storage container with no drainage . I'll just be watering it based on how the sphagnum looks so I'm not really worried about drainage though I may put some holes in the bottom at some point. The soil mix is sphagnum and perlite. I intend to leave them here and let the whole tub get properly overgrown :) I think I might bring them inside and put them under a light for winter but I'm not sure yet.

Nice. Fingers crossed it works out long term