ioperate
Active Member
Was away from the hobby for a few years doing a lot of travelling, now settled again and have my terrarium fully setup.
I've always been a fan of small terrarium setups and have never been able to properly control the environment in my previous setups so I build my own automated garden. It was important for me to be able to automate watering when I'm away at conferences and such so the base is set up to be able to remotely flood the garden. When I'm not away i hand water.
Based off an outdoor garden shelter from Costco:
http://www.costco.ca/Palram-Plant-Inn-Elevated-Garden-Bed.product.10364133.html
I reinforced the flimsy base and put in a flood table made from 2x6s and plywood. Sealed with a sturdy pond liner.
Lighting is provided by a 600w Phillips metal halide hortilux BLUE on a Gravita Digistar 600w digital ballast. I'm only running at 400w right now as I'm still introducing new plants and letting them get used to things before trying out 600w. http://www.eyehortilux.com/products/Metal-Halide#blue. I'm really liking this bulb, its not hard on the eyes and has a great balanced spectrum for orchids. There's not a lot of red but has some, apparently orchids don't need a lot of red to flower so we'll see how it goes. So far no problems initiating blooms on parishii, mount toro and a couple oncidium NOIDs.
The digital ballast was giving off a HUGE amount of electromagnetic radiation even though its supposed to be shielded. This completely interfered with the probes from the Ecozone vivarium controller. Worked with the guy who makes the ecozone (very helpful dude) and ended up using a huge ferrite after narrowing down the source to being the cord from the ballast to bulb. A tonne of wraps of the cord around the ferrite and the EM was gone.
It's housed in a cool tube air-cooled reflector. The inlet of the reflector has a Horti-Control "Dust Shroom" filter to continuously filter the terrarium down to 0.1 micron.
On the shelving outside the terrarium sits the ducting, fan, cooling system, humidity fogger and Ecozone Vivarium controller to run the system. All electronics are on the third shelf above all water tubing etc for safety.
The system is setup so air is pulled through the hood and over the light - then into the sealed rubbermaid where the fogger sits to pick up humidity (on the ground) - then across the "Ice box" radiator to cool the air (second shelf) - into the inline fan (second shelf) and is pushed into the side of the terrarium. I can't remember the CFM of the fan, its a lot, have it on a motor dimmer to control the flow and probably runs at about half. Pumps a lot of air flow through the box, enough to keep all the leaves moving.
The rubbermaid is big, can't remember how much water it holds but it takes about 1-2 weeks for the fogger to go through it all. Fogger is an Ultrasonic Mist maker with 3 heads. http://www.thehouseofhydro.com/three-head-mist-maker.html
The cooling system is built based on the Hydro Innovations Ice Box (black rectangle thing). http://www.hydroinnovations.com/products/ice-box-6-or-8. Water at 50F is circulated through the Ice Box when the Ecozone detects that the terrarium needs cooling, the air flows over the cold radiator dropping the temp, once its reached the desired temp the water pump shuts off. Can drop the temp of the reservoir even further but its not necessary right now. With the res at 50F I can drop the terrarium to 55F pretty easily.
Below the Ice Box and fan sits the reservoir and chiller. Reservoir is a ~4 gallon coleman cooler. Chiller is a JBJ mini Arctica 1/4 hp. I first bought a 1/10hp but it was a bit weak so switched it for a 1/4. It easily keeps the reservoir water at 50f. Two pumps sit inside the reservoir, both are eheim compact+ 3000s which run at ~750gph. http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?pcatid=28124. One pump runs continuously to pump from the reservoir to the chiller. The second is controlled by the Ecozone to turn on and off when water needs to pump up to the ice box radiator to cool the terrarium.
When the Ice Box is running and the room is cooling quite a lot of condensation takes place from the rapid drop in dew point so a small tube goes from the bottom of the ice box to drain it back to the humidity tub.
When I need to go out of town and water remotely I have a big rubbermaid reservoir I fill with nutrient solution under the greenhouse. A small pump floods the terrarium until it reaches the top of the return drain that sits up about 4 inches in a standard Ebb and Flood setup. This can be triggered remotely by the networked Ecozone controller. Haven't needed to use it since I've been in my new place but will need to drill some holes in the sides of the aircone pots I use, also need to set the smaller pots up on something so they don't flood completely.
Finally the brain of the system is the Ecozone Vivarium controller. http://ecozonevivarium.com/products-vivarium-controllers.aspx. It has a lot of cool features, a number of which I don't use as they are more applicable to keeping reptiles and such. One probe goes from the controller to the terrarium to monitor temperature and humidity, I bought a second temp only probe that sits in the reservoir so I can monitor how the water temp changes when cooling is needed.
The system has some nice features for daily and monthly temperature and humidity changes. It changes the temperature gradually when it transitions from day-night over about 3 hours. Also the monthly temp/humidity changes happen over a set transition period replicating a more natural change of season.
For daily maintenance stuff I have a garden hose from a tap in the furnace room to fill the humidity tub every week or two. I water by hand and the runoff empties out the terrarium through the ebb and flood holes in one corner into a bucket I place below. Empty this by hand lugging it over to the sink.
Next i'll post my plant list and some pics!
I've always been a fan of small terrarium setups and have never been able to properly control the environment in my previous setups so I build my own automated garden. It was important for me to be able to automate watering when I'm away at conferences and such so the base is set up to be able to remotely flood the garden. When I'm not away i hand water.
Based off an outdoor garden shelter from Costco:
http://www.costco.ca/Palram-Plant-Inn-Elevated-Garden-Bed.product.10364133.html
I reinforced the flimsy base and put in a flood table made from 2x6s and plywood. Sealed with a sturdy pond liner.
Lighting is provided by a 600w Phillips metal halide hortilux BLUE on a Gravita Digistar 600w digital ballast. I'm only running at 400w right now as I'm still introducing new plants and letting them get used to things before trying out 600w. http://www.eyehortilux.com/products/Metal-Halide#blue. I'm really liking this bulb, its not hard on the eyes and has a great balanced spectrum for orchids. There's not a lot of red but has some, apparently orchids don't need a lot of red to flower so we'll see how it goes. So far no problems initiating blooms on parishii, mount toro and a couple oncidium NOIDs.
The digital ballast was giving off a HUGE amount of electromagnetic radiation even though its supposed to be shielded. This completely interfered with the probes from the Ecozone vivarium controller. Worked with the guy who makes the ecozone (very helpful dude) and ended up using a huge ferrite after narrowing down the source to being the cord from the ballast to bulb. A tonne of wraps of the cord around the ferrite and the EM was gone.
It's housed in a cool tube air-cooled reflector. The inlet of the reflector has a Horti-Control "Dust Shroom" filter to continuously filter the terrarium down to 0.1 micron.
On the shelving outside the terrarium sits the ducting, fan, cooling system, humidity fogger and Ecozone Vivarium controller to run the system. All electronics are on the third shelf above all water tubing etc for safety.
The system is setup so air is pulled through the hood and over the light - then into the sealed rubbermaid where the fogger sits to pick up humidity (on the ground) - then across the "Ice box" radiator to cool the air (second shelf) - into the inline fan (second shelf) and is pushed into the side of the terrarium. I can't remember the CFM of the fan, its a lot, have it on a motor dimmer to control the flow and probably runs at about half. Pumps a lot of air flow through the box, enough to keep all the leaves moving.
The rubbermaid is big, can't remember how much water it holds but it takes about 1-2 weeks for the fogger to go through it all. Fogger is an Ultrasonic Mist maker with 3 heads. http://www.thehouseofhydro.com/three-head-mist-maker.html
The cooling system is built based on the Hydro Innovations Ice Box (black rectangle thing). http://www.hydroinnovations.com/products/ice-box-6-or-8. Water at 50F is circulated through the Ice Box when the Ecozone detects that the terrarium needs cooling, the air flows over the cold radiator dropping the temp, once its reached the desired temp the water pump shuts off. Can drop the temp of the reservoir even further but its not necessary right now. With the res at 50F I can drop the terrarium to 55F pretty easily.
Below the Ice Box and fan sits the reservoir and chiller. Reservoir is a ~4 gallon coleman cooler. Chiller is a JBJ mini Arctica 1/4 hp. I first bought a 1/10hp but it was a bit weak so switched it for a 1/4. It easily keeps the reservoir water at 50f. Two pumps sit inside the reservoir, both are eheim compact+ 3000s which run at ~750gph. http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?pcatid=28124. One pump runs continuously to pump from the reservoir to the chiller. The second is controlled by the Ecozone to turn on and off when water needs to pump up to the ice box radiator to cool the terrarium.
When the Ice Box is running and the room is cooling quite a lot of condensation takes place from the rapid drop in dew point so a small tube goes from the bottom of the ice box to drain it back to the humidity tub.
When I need to go out of town and water remotely I have a big rubbermaid reservoir I fill with nutrient solution under the greenhouse. A small pump floods the terrarium until it reaches the top of the return drain that sits up about 4 inches in a standard Ebb and Flood setup. This can be triggered remotely by the networked Ecozone controller. Haven't needed to use it since I've been in my new place but will need to drill some holes in the sides of the aircone pots I use, also need to set the smaller pots up on something so they don't flood completely.
Finally the brain of the system is the Ecozone Vivarium controller. http://ecozonevivarium.com/products-vivarium-controllers.aspx. It has a lot of cool features, a number of which I don't use as they are more applicable to keeping reptiles and such. One probe goes from the controller to the terrarium to monitor temperature and humidity, I bought a second temp only probe that sits in the reservoir so I can monitor how the water temp changes when cooling is needed.
The system has some nice features for daily and monthly temperature and humidity changes. It changes the temperature gradually when it transitions from day-night over about 3 hours. Also the monthly temp/humidity changes happen over a set transition period replicating a more natural change of season.
For daily maintenance stuff I have a garden hose from a tap in the furnace room to fill the humidity tub every week or two. I water by hand and the runoff empties out the terrarium through the ebb and flood holes in one corner into a bucket I place below. Empty this by hand lugging it over to the sink.
Next i'll post my plant list and some pics!
