Help! New Apartment unsuitable for CP (Terrarium)

15 years ago

I moved into my new apartment, but, well...

It's worse than I thought, there's nothing but shade out my windows. My apartment is East-facing and only gets direct sunlight for a few hours in the evening.

Some of my plants should be OK (Strawberries, Stevia, etc) but I'm worried about my CPs. I only get about 3 hours of direct sunlight a day, but plenty of indirect light. I do not think that will be enough for my plants.

Fortunately I have permission to mount stuff to the walls (but not necessarily the outside walls, will check -- doubt it). That rules out, unfortunately, a windowbox, at least as far as I know, and my deck has no railing (so no "no-screws" box drooping over the deck).

Unfortunately, the apartment complex did not give me the option to review the apartment before move-in -- and doubly unfortunately, I wouldn't have had an option to say no (outside of something really really bad) in the first place.

So, my option at this point, I believe, is a terrarium. I'm completely lost as to how to do so, however. I was reading the excellent FAQ on Sarracenia.com, but, my mind is swimming a bit with the whole thing.

http://www.sarracenia.com/faq/faq6010c.html

I would prefer to do as much purchasing online as possible -- or at least, links to sites that will show me what exactly things are called -- with it being as "newbie proof" as possible as well. I was thinking of picking up the box locally (there's several good shops in the area for fishtanks) but, I just do not know enough about what I'm buying to make an educated purchase for the rest of it.

As far as I know, what I'll need to get is:

* Fishtank (was told a "29" should be enough for my needs, presuming that's gallons)

* "Lid" fitted for such (presumably one that will hold 2 lights)

* 2x (or more) Light Bulbs (Was told a warm light and a natural light should cover all my bases)

* "Ballast" (Electronics to support the light)

* Timer of some kind

I have a decently small collection, so I might have to get more than 1 terrarium, or somesuch:

2x White Trumpets (different planters)

1x Judith Hindle (W/ plants to repot soon)

2x VFT (Typical)

1x Mixed pot (D. scorpioides, D. pulchella x nitidula, P. moranensis P. grandiflora in one big 7" Pot)

1x Mixed pot (D. tokaiensis x2, D. Adeae, D. capensis 'alba' in a 7" Translucent fishbowl)

1x N. Ventricosa (about a 10-12" pot)

1x D. capensis

1x S. purpurea (about a 6" pot)

1x S. purpurea (2" pot -- this one's died and come back multiple times)

Of the batch, if I had to pick only 2 plants to save, I'd have to go with my VFT (which could, I imagine, in an emergency, go into the fridge early) and my D. capensis, as they are my two original CPs.

I am unsure as to which ones could survive in a lower light situation -- I imagine the N. Ventricosa should be fine, for example. It's by no means a DARK location, just not direct sunlight -- is there a way to test how much light a specific area is getting?

I was thinking of just putting the plants on a dresser and using some "shop light" mounts to provide extra light to the plants, as I was unsure if the plants would need the extra

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Comments (6)

mcantrell
Original Author
15 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Interesting, here's a light sensor, wonder if that would help me figure out if my lighting was sufficient:

http://www.blackjungle.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=BJTS&Product_Code=LM-A&Category_Code=LGT
mcantrell
Original Author
15 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Well. Calming down a little bit, doing a little more research to see which ones are in the most danger of dying.

I think some of my plants (D. Adelae, for example) will do just fine in their environment -- in fact, D. Adelae might do better with less direct sun.

My worry is the Cape Sundew and VFT, my two original plants, as well as my Pygmy Sundews and Butterworts. Still doing some research on those.

The Pygmys finally came around at the old place, right before I left -- after I started doing several smaller daily waterings rather than using a tray of water. They actually finally started doing really well over the past few weeks: The D. p x n shot up a flower for the first time ever, and the D. scorpioides has the biggest tentacles I've ever seen it have yet.

I donno if it's me watering it regularly with small doses of water, or if it's just finally acclimated to the area, or what.

I'm not sure the VFT will make a good Windowsill plant, nor am I sure it will do very well in a terrarium -- I might have to just put up with the little guy being outside in the shade.

PetSmart here has a $10 10 gallon aquarium, which seems a bit (read: very) cheap. It would probably hold just about all my plants, so...

No lid, but they don't appear to have any lids that have two light mounts, so that's fine by me.

I'm not sure if I should be looking at the long bulb style lightbulbs or the standard light bulb lights.
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I kind of disagree with you not researching it first on text material like books. Since a book can provide a wealth of information, inquiring a person will give you limited information. Its simply too much for one person to type. The reason there are books out there, and one of the best is the Peter DÂAmatoÂs book: The Savage Garden. Amazon.com will sell books at a discount price, but you can find that book in a pubic library if you donÂt want to pay say $20 or $30 for it. It usually best to research what you want to buy before buying it 1st then asking questions later. To many a newbie have killed their plants right off the bat by adding fertilizer, planting them in regular potting soil and watering them with tap water. Or simply sending them into an irrecoverable shock by exposing them suddenly to drier air, under the sun, without hardening the plants 1st. As a result more then one newbie have wasted $2 or $5 when some purchase their plants in a general store or nursery. But others have wasted $25, $50, and even $100 worth of plants they bought from a specialized nursery. The idea people go to forum to inquire to a particular problem like a pest problem and want to find someone how they handled that problem or learn what done wrong if a plant fails to grow. So if you donÂt want to research it yourself, people will think you will be to lazy to do you own work yourself and will eventually kill their newly purchased plants anyways. NowÂ I donÂt now which pitcher plant you fed bugs and how small these insects are? Since the plants themselves sold by Lowes are quite small and lacking the digestive fluids inside their pitchers. Most likely whatÂs going to happen is the bugs are going to rot and kill the leaves. Sundews and butterwort (P. primuliflora) donÂt have catching appendage, since it is the leaves itself that does the catching. The leaves of sundews are covered with hairs and has a "dew" drop on each hair. Butterworts on the other hand their leaf surface is covered with sticky mucilage. DonÂt feed the plants, they can do that themselves. DonÂt try feeding the Venus flytrap, even if it grows new traps, it will be too weak to digest the insect. Digesting an insect takes a lot of reserve energy before it can utilize it. It may take up to a month or 2 for a VFT to recover. Now your "Should they be fed into the soil like a regular plant?", are you referring to adding fertilizer to the soil. If soÂ DONÂT. That is a common mistake made by newbies trying to grow their 1st CPs, adding fertilizer to the growing media. Fertilizer will kill your plants, CP have a weak root system, and is mainly used to anchor the plant to the media and draw out moisture, and thatÂs it. Fertilizer will destroy that root system and eventually kill your plants. That also means not to use regular potting soil, even if part of the ingredients contains sphagnum peat moss and perlite. It also has other things like fertilizer and wetting agents. What you need is pure sphagnum peat moss and perlite to aerate the media, nothing else. Make sure it doesnÂt have any additives at all. You mix it up in a 50:50 mix. This is the true and tried growing media for most CPs. Sit the VFT, sundews, Sarracenia pitcher plants (the purple pitcher plant) in a dish with 1 inch of water. The butterwort P. primuliflora in my experience does well growing in straight long fiber sphagnum moss and likes its media quite wet. Nepenthes only require having their media most and not as wet as other CPs. Nepenthes will require a mix of long fiber sphagnum moss used for orchids, again make sure no additives and you can mix it with one part perlite and one part fine orchid bark. They like their media most but with enough drainage for their roots. Use distilled water to water them, donÂt use for any reason tap water, purified water, or drinking water. These still contain minerals that will eventually kill your plants. Second choice is rainwater collected in a bucket, followed with R/O water but distilled is still the best choice. For now have them growing in a wind sill from indirect sunlight in their own ÂterrariumsÂ (aka the cubes-of-death by the CP community), lift one corner slightly to allow ventilation, checking for drooping or wilting leaves. Be careful not to let the media dry out. In a weak lift one corner a bit more, again checking for wilting and do this slowly. This way you can harden your plants to a drier environment and give the plants time to build the natural wax coating over their leaves that protects them from drier air. As they develop new leaves, gently expose the Sarracenias and VFT to stronger sunlight, keeping an eye on wilting or sings of burning leaves. Control the amount of sunlight to allow them time to harden. Although the sundew will recover the quickest, followed by VFT & Sarracenias. Neps may take 4 months to develop new leaves and even then it will not develop new pitchers. They are known to take about half a year to recover. Nepenthes, butterwort, and the sundew will do best growing under indirect sunlight or under very bright fluorescent lamps. Nepenthes especially require at least 12 hours of bright light to grow their pitchers properly, Neps are tropical plants that do receive long hours of light. That basically covers the basics but it is better to you research things 1st and read books for information to avoid mistakes in the 1st place. Good luck.
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It is not so much that we disagree, it is just that the concern comes from experience for most of us. We have just about all tried terrariums with Carnivorous plants and had them die time after time within a few short months or weeks. We really would like you to have a healthy group of plants and not waste your money or time on something that does not work 99.9% of the time. If your able to make it work, more power to you. The main issue would be not to cover the terrarium as that creates a closed environment that does not allow air flow and encourages fungus growth. Drainage is a big problem, so make sure you do not overwater the plants, particularly the Nepenthes and the Butterwort, as they will die from root rot easily. Each species, once again, requires different conditions and watering, so a single terrarium for them all might be right for one and wrong for the rest on watering, soil type, drainage, etc. Make sure you have a very good light source. For Venus Flytraps that means something in the range of 24000 to 36000 lumens of light from a big, expensive, hot metal halide light or from a bank of so many florescent shop lights that you would basically have to create a room just for your plants inside. Each plant also has different light considerations so be careful not to burn the butterwort in light that your flytrap likes. Good luck with your plants.
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What wattage are the bulbs?, since they are flurencent you dont need to worry about heat. I sont think you can really give "too much" light with flurecent lights unless you go buy on of those 1000watt growlux bulbs that are classified as "high intensity" I ordered one by mistake when I was starting out, the bulb was around $100.00 and the thing lights up the entire freaking room!!, it sounds like 4 beehives on steriods and gets really hot too. The first site I got my plants from suggests 160watt of lighting for VFT's, I dont know if you need this much but the newboes that are buying from him have used this without killing their VFT's. I think you will be more than fine using both of them, you can pretty much tell how much light the VFT's are getting by how red they are in their traps, if they are bright red all inside then they have plenty of light, if not then they could do with more. Mine are quite red but I could glady put another 2 40 watt verilux bulbs above them and they would love it. hope that helps abit Sheldon
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Unless the water part is only one or one and a half inches tall with some water friendly wooden branch in it for safety reasons, any dart frog would probably drown in the water. Dart frogs can not swim. I own one and it can't swim at all. They need shallow streams that are only one and a half inches deep (two inches for the bigger species) at the most. Also, they might want a branch in the water in case they have trouble and need to get out of the water for safety reasons. I've seen pics of other people's tanks on this forum and on the internet and they have the following for water sources: a waterfall that turns into a shallow water stream, a small to medium sized reptile rock dish (I have one of these for my dart frog, Rain), or a small water wading area. I have seen pics of tanks where the water is four or more inches deep and never see any of the frogs in the water in any of the pics. Probably because they would not feel safe in such deep water. Somebody even had the cocohut in the deep water part where one-third of the hut was in the water. I doubt that the frog could use the cocohut at all. Remember, dart frogs come from the rainforest where there's mostly soil, trees, plants, and small puddles of water on the ground among the leaves. Since you did use silicone on the water part, I would suggest a tree frog. They can stand three to four inches of water, swim a little bit, like tanks that are on the tall side (most of the dart frog tanks I've seen in the pics were the ones that were on the long side), and would get along good with pitcher plants (I saw one sitting in a pitcher plant at one of the spring festivals that I went to and it was able to safely get out of the plant). I hope you give this advice some consideration.
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Krstofer
15 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
I'm in a rush, but I'll post some pix later..

I've most of mine (VFT's, pygmy's, cephalotus...) in one of those petsmart tanks. Currently I've 3 'coily' 23 watt fluorescent bulbs hanging above them & they're doing just fine. They're sitting in about 1/2" of water & the humidity is stable at about 70%. I put on a plastic-wrap lid just to see & it went up to about 97%

Plan is to get another tank & send the pygmies into gemmae production, hanging a 70 watt metal halide above them & a 250w MH above the rest. (and everyone else in the kitchen plant rack)

its fairly easy to grow these guys in a confined space as they're so small.

My sarracenias & s'more VFT's are outside in a planter- I'll try & get a pic of those guys as well as they could hang out on your deck fairly easily. They should do fine in zone 7 or more I'm fairly sure- Mine have.

Picked up the VFT's last year on ebay- 10 dormant bulbs for 10 bucks. I thought they'd be tiny.. But all of 'em bloomed. Score!
mcantrell
Original Author
15 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Hm, only 3 standard bulbs? That's a lot less light than I'd think you'd need. Crazy, but does give me a bit o' hope.

I went to Lowes, they have shop lights that are about 1 (maybe 2) feet long for $16, not sure if that's just the mount and I have to get the Ballast et all later, or what. I've been told making a "box" to hold the silly thing above the tank / plants would be pretty cheap, just make it from Plexiglass and put some tin foil or something inside to reflect light down -- if needed.

I noticed yesterday that the sun actually started hitting the first corner of the deck around 1 PM in the afternoon and kept it up until it hit dusk at around 7-8 or so. That's 6 hours of light if I pick my places carefully, not too shabby.

One problem I think I might have is my plants overgrowing the terrarium -- my Cape Sundew, for example, has fairly constantly gotten rootbound and needed repotting. Not sure if I should just trim back the roots when they get that big or what in a terrarium -- but that seems needlessly cruel.
Krstofer
15 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Ok. Here's the rack in the kitchen:

{{gwi:567288}}

And a close look into the fishtank / terrarium:

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How much light actually hits a surface is a function of the distance from the bulb. The closer the bulb is to that whatever- The more light that whatever gets. Here's a pic:

{{gwi:567290}}

At 1 foot we've got 1 lumen, right? Let's call that 1 square foot of surface. Now move that bulb 2 feet away from the surface and suddenly that same amount of light is trying to cover four square feet of surface, thus effectively we have 1/4 lumen per square foot.

The further away the bulb is the smaller the amount of light you get on the same size surface.

So. Those shop-lights at Lowes or Home Depot? They're good for a shop. Not so much for growing plants. The 'standard' shop-light needs 2 forty watt bulbs (not included) so you get 80 watts of output spread over 4'.. 20 watts per foot. Yes, the ballast comes with the light & the whole thing is usually less than $10, but you have to buy the bulbs. Some don't even come with a reflector so 1/2 the light goes... Somewhere else. They're Great for a shop or garage where you want some light over a large area- They suck for a spot where you want every bit of light you can get on a small area.

Those little 'spiral' bulbs you see hanging in the pic? 23 watts each from a point source. So I've got 60 watts hanging about 4" from the plants in the terrrarium.
If I was using a shop-light sure I could just get one & use it to light the whole shelf on that rack. But if the terrarium is 1' wide so I would only have 1' of shop-light above it.. So 20 watts of light & since I can't lower that light into the terrarium the source would be about 12" away from the plants.
Back to the 'light output' pic above for a minute- 60 watts at 4" Vs. 20 watts at 12". With the shop-light I've got 1/3rd as much light output 8" further away... Not good.
Plus a box of 4 'twirly' bulbs is about $10... Same price (without the bulbs) as that shop-light.
Yes, if you are going to use those twirly bulbs you need the sockets & a cord. I'm using a 12' extension cord- One of those ones with 3 plugs on the end... They're $2 at Home Depot.
The sockets can be hard to find- I got mine at the local plumbing & electrical shop for $2 each. Just split that extension cord & slap 'em on:
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Makes it pretty easy to hang them wherever & raise / lower on a string. Put your hand under the bulb at the plant level- If you can leave your hand there comfortably then the bulb isn't too close & won't burn those plants.
So $10 for 4 twirly bulbs + $2 for the cord + $8 for the sockets + $20 for the whole setup. Want a timer? Cheap ones are $5. So $25 for 80 watts of light? That's hard to beat.

The whole idea is to get the most light possible as close as possible to the plants. Which is why I bought a 250 watt metal-halide setup for a fishtank.. I'm in the process of building a reflector for it & whence finished I'll replace those twirly bulbs with it. Have to have it about a foot away as it puts out lots of heat, but I'll still have more light hitting those plants.

If you are wondering- My 250 watt setup will cost me $40 for the ballast (ebay) & $20 for the bulb- so $60 for the entire light. Now I got the ballast as a "kit".. Had to put it together. Also have to build a reflector & a socket for the bulb- Which has been a bit tedious. With my time & everything call it $100. Not too bad for 250 watts.

Years ago I built a big (ish) terrarium with a bunch of twirly bulbs & some shop-lights.. Even a misting system controlled by a humidistat. (there's a how-to coming by special request about controlling something with a humidistat) check it out here if you wish its at the bottom of the page.
I didn't seal the bottom very well apparently as it began to leak after about 6 months.. And allll those bulbs created way too much heat which I had to get rhid of which screwed up the humidity.
A learning experience.

~Oh. In the plant rack pic? That round circline bulb on the far right? (hiding behind the decrepit passion flower) Ya don't bother with those. They're expensive, only 22 watts and frankly kindof suck.
For ease of use + price the 23 watt twirly bulbs are your best bet.
mcantrell
Original Author
15 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Um, I thought the wattage wasn't as important as the lumens?

I was thinking of getting a twin tube strip light (finally got the name right) and hanging it under shelves like what you have, but I'm worried that my plants will outgrow it (or get too close and cook).

Help! New Apartment unsuitable for CP (Terrarium)

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Help! New Apartment unsuitable for CP (Terrarium)

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