Environment
Right now I keep the tank at a day temp of 76F and a night time temp of 68F. The humidity stays around 85%. I can control all of this using the fans. To help describe this, I will start with the general airflow of the design. As I described earlier, one fan is blowing across the top of the hood, past the ballasts, down through some holes drilled in the wood separating the top of the hood (ballasts) with the bottom of the hood (bulbs). Top view:
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The air then travels back across the bottom past the bulbs and out an exaust hole. The hole setup is pretty much air tight. If I turn down the fans, the whole thing gets hotter and in turn heats up the small tank, turn the fans up and the tank cools to room temp. It’s not perfect control, but I can get the thing up to the mid 80’s which is plenty hot.
The two fans on the left side behind the cut off corner are used to bring outside air into the tank. The air comes in through the fans, down the opening left for the waterfall pump, under the false bottom, up through the floor, and finally out some exhaust holes that have been drilled in the top front of the tank. Turning these fans up reduces the humidity in the tank moving it towards the room humidity. Turning the fans down and the humidity will go all the way to 100%.
The fans inside the tank keep air always circulating so the air never gets stagnant. I can move that fans anywhere I want in the tank depending on what I want the airflow to do. Even with the fans down low, the air current is pretty strong. You can see the leaves of the plants blowing in the breeze. It is a really nice effect. The use of these fans allows me to change the environment a great deal in the tank, I think the key was separating the airflow around the bulbs from the airflow into the tank. I believe it is a very good system.
Plants
Currently every plant in the tank is an orchid except for one. I’ll leave it to you to see if anyone can find the odd ball (note:I am not counting the moss in the tank as the odd ball). There are 14 different orchids in the tank, and all of them fall in the warm side of intermediate to Warm climate. I plan on adding more miniatures when I get them, and I also plan on adding some other small plants. (Small being the key word).
Here is the list of orchids in the tank:
Scaphosepalum ovulare
Neokoehleria langkastii
Macroclinium dalstroemii
Trisetella hoeijeri
Masdevallia erinacea
Dryadella aurea
Dracula vespertilio
Cyclopogon epiphyticus
Haraella odorata
Masdevallia brachyura
Masdevallia empusa
Macodes petola
Pot.Hoku Gem 'Freckles'
(bl.Richard Mueller x Slc.Tangerine Jewel)
Ornithocephalus Kruegeri
