My Office Orchids

I wanted to bring a little slice of the cloud forest to my office. So I built a little orchid tank for my desk at work. The chamber is all 1/8” plexiglass construction.



I have the following plants added:

• Bulbophyllum alagense
• Diodonopsis erinacea
• Dracula lotax
• Dryadella cristata
• Erycina pusilla
• Gastrochilus retrocallus
• Lepanthes calodictyon
• Lepanthes tsubotae
• Scaphosepalum rapax
• Specklinia grobyi
• Trisetella strumosa
• Peperomia emarginella
• Ficus pumila var. minima
• Sinningia ‘Silhouette’ f2 – (not sure this will work long term)
• Trailing Violet 'Broadway Star Trail'– (not sure this will work long term)
• Several tropical mosses

I built it fully automatic so that I can take a few weeks off on vacation and not kill everything in the tank (at least that is the plan). I ran it uninterrupted for a week and think i have the plant placement sorted out to get them the right water and light.

I will post the construction details in this thread later if anyone is interested.

 

The box is put together using 11”x14” 3/32” thick acrylic sheets. I had a bunch from a previous project, and they were the perfect size for the space I had so that is what I used. Thin acrylic will bend a little, but for a small project it works fine. For something larger, go thicker.


Cutting Acrylic

Acrylic is really easy to work with; in fact I find it easier than working with wood. To cut it, you use a straight edge and scratch a line with one of these: Acrylic Knife


Then just bend it on the edge of a counter or table at the scratch till it breaks. If you have cut a pane of glass it is the same principle. If you’re handy, it will also will cut with your wood working tools, table saw, router, drill press all work great. Here is a link with good info: http://www.bcae1.com/plexi.htm

Gluing Acrylic

Gluing Acrylic is pretty simple, if you aren’t trying to achieve perfection. I just used some thick Acrylic Cement like this: Acrylic Cement

It will leave bubbles in your seams, and not look perfect. Here is an close up example (on the right):



Find a good box or something with a 90 degree corner, set both pieces together forming a “V” and run a bead of the cement. It is runny enough that if the bottom of the “V” is lowest, it will settle in and look pretty good. You don’t need to get this fancy, but here is a picture of a simple jig I made with two boards screwed together to form the 90 degrees, you can see how I prop it up so the seam I am gluing is the lowest part of the V:



If you want really clean seam, you need really clean cuts, and you need to use a different glue, one like this: Thin Acrylic Cement

Here is a set of pretty good instructions for using these acrylic glues: http://www.wikihow.com/Glue-Acrylic. Works great, but takes more time, and a little more DIY skill.

 

Thanks for the feedback Marni and Kipper. It really isn't a terribly hard project.

 

The Tank

The box is solid on both sides, back, and bottom.

Then I put a 3” strip at the bottom to form a base that would hold a few inches of water. You want somewhere for the extra water to go.


Then I added 4 1” strips around the top for extra support.


Finally I added a couple of hinges and a little handle to create the door that swings up.



I cut a glass top from a Goodwill picture frame (the acrylic would bend too much for the top supporting heavy lights). Added a couple of pieces of Acrylic to the sides of the top so it wouldn’t slide off.



I then drilled a couple holes in the bottom, made a couple latches out of some scrap, and used a little plastic screw and nut to hold them in place. They kinda hold the door closed.


Note: the tank was the hardest part of this project, you coudl take a huge shortcut and start with something like a prebuilt tank

 

The Background

I wanted this to look natural, like a little slice of the cloud forest. I decided to do a technique often done in Vivarium construction. It basically uses 3 things. Expanding Foam (Great Stuff), Black Silicone, and some natural material like Peat Moss.

First you spray on some expanding foam to give it some 3-D texture. Let the foam dry overnight, you can cut away anything you don’t like or to further shape the background to look nice once it is dry.



Second you spread on a thin layer of black silicone, just enough to cover all the acrylic and yellow foam. You will need to use your hands, don’t worry some paper towels will clean them up just fine.

Third, you will press your natural mix into the silicone. Just press it all over, then let the silicone dry before you try to brush away any extra. You should have a very natural looking background.



I did a little test to see how well different coverings looked before I decided to go with a mix of Peat, Chopped Sphagnum, and Coir. I liked the color, and it held water without staying too soggy when I sprayed it. The first on the left was Atlanta Botanical Gardens Mix (Charcoal, Treefern, Sphagnum, and Peat). Next just cheap Peat moss. Third the mix I went with of Peat, Spagnum, and Coir. Finally was just Sphagnum.



Note: One really nice thing about the great foam back ground, is that the little wire hooks on the miniature orchid mounts can poke right into it, so if you don’t want to be able to move your plants around or even in and out of the tank, you will be fine.

 

Air Flow

There are two different ways this box gets air movement. There are small gaps between the glass lid and the top of the tank which allows some air exchange. But the main source of air movement is two small 40mm 12 volt “muffin” fans that are inside the tank. Something like this.

They are wired to a universal power supply like this.

Electricity Warning: doing electrical DIY can lead to pain, fires or worse. While this project is about as simple and safe as working with electricity can get, please use proper precautions. Here is a good link if you want to learn more about working safely with electricity.

To get the fans working, you simply cut the end off of both the power supply wire and the fan wires. Twist one wire to from a fan to one wire from the power supply and the other wire of the fan to the other wire of the power supply and plug it in. If the fan is spinning in the wrong direction, just switch the wires. If you turn the little switch down from 12v to 9v, the fans will spin slower and blow less air. It is that simple.

The variable speed fans make it nice to help control air flow. If you put the fans in the tank and it is blowing the leaves off your plants, or things are drying out way too fast, turn it down. If you see molds or other problems, turn the fans up.

Disguising the fans

If you want to kinda hide the ugly fans, you can follow the same process as the background. Foam, black silicone, and natural coating. Here is one of the fans that sits right out in plain sight:



To hide the cords, skip the foam and just use the silicone and natural coating. They will hang like little roots or vines



Mounting the Fans

We can also take advantage of that foam background now to mount the fans. I used some epoxy to glue on a little wire (like the hook we use to hang our mounted miniatures). Then you can just hang the fan in the background. This allows you to move it around to get your airflow right. Just leave enough “vine” wire so that it will allow you to stick the fans where you want.

Tip: if you have a fan hitting the viewing window, you can keep fog or mist from preventing you from seeing inside your tank.

 

To be honest I have always let the misters hit them, they still seem to work for a long time, when one goes bad it is fairly easy to replace, and cheap, but honestly the water doesn't seem to bother them much. The one thing I do watch is to make sure they they either point straight out or slightly down. If they point upward, the mist will gather in front of the fan and sort of bubble there. Not sure it is an actual problem, but make a little noise and annoys me.

 

The Bottom

I wanted to create a little island raised above the clay aggregate pellets. Under the island I needed a reservoir of water where excess water would drain and remain below the bottom of the island so the water doesn’t wick back into the soil. This lets me plant some terrestrial plants on the bottom without rotting out the roots. I could have also kept it simple and just dropped in a few inches of clay pellets all across the bottom with no reservoir, and lived without terrestrials.

To do this I needed something to set the island on. I added to the floor a few pieces of acrylic standing up with holes in the bottom (so water can flow freely). You can kinda see it in this picture:



Then I used some “Plastic egg crate” light diffuser like this. Cut into the size and shape of my island. I then covered it with some landscape cloth to let the water drain through but keep the substrate from eroding down into the reservoir.


I kind of stitched the edge to for a lip to keep the substrate on the island.



Then I covered the outside edge with block silicone and pressed in some of the substrate to make it look nice.


For the substrate I used Atlanta Botanical Garden (ABG) mix that is often used by people who keep poison dart frogs. It doesn’t break down easy, and stays fresh even with wet conditions. I also had a bunch on hand. It is a mix of milled Sphagnum moss, Peat, Charcoal, and fine tree fern fiber.

I set the island on the raised supports, then filled it with my ABG mix, and added my driftwood. Now I needed to fill the gap between the tank walls and the support. To do this I used some PrimeAgra which is an expanded clay pellet. Ray from this forum turned me onto the stuff many years ago (THANKS RAY!). I figure I can also grow a few things semi-hydroponically along the edge. One fan blows along the top of some of the PrimeAgra which I think adds a little bit of evaporative cooling.

 

Lighting

I have 2 LED lights on top:

A cheap 10W flood light http://www.lightingever.com/10w-super-bright-led-flood-lights-dw.html – in the front

ZooMed Terrarium light 9”-13” http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?pcatid=28860 – in the back

Turns out I am convinced I could have been fine with just the first cheap flood light. In fact, I had to add a layer of paper towel between that light and the glass to dim things a bit. I was burning leaves underneath it. Even with the paper towel, some leaves are turning nicely pink. I do like the more spot light effect of the ZooMed, it has lenses on the LEDs that provide a couple of very bright pillars of light. Looks cool, and will allow me to put some minis that require high light. Right now there aren’t any real high light requiring plants in the tank (other than some moss).

I have been getting some great advice from Naoki on this board (Thanks Naoki!!!), on building my own dimmable high power LED lighting. Once I get that built, I plan on swapping out the two units for the new custom built unit. I will let you know how that goes.

 

Erycina pusilla

Here is a picture of one of the twig epiphytes growing on the artificial twig. It grows close to the top and gets a lot of light.

 

Yes, I believe Erycina is what they call it now. I too am familiar with Psygmorchis, and struggle to call it by the new name. Plus, Psygmorchis just sounds cooler.