zozo
Member
Again nice work!... Very interesting stuff those 3D printers... Placing the lamp or heat source outside could work well... I have one planted bowl (in my Hermetosphere thread) with a led light in it, it gets a little warm to the touch but it still is too warm to be in the bowl, when I turn the light on it looks like steamy windows within half an hour. It actually ain't the LED's that get warm, it's the built-in driver/controller that runs the LED's hogging the most energy en producing heat.
The LED ring picture in my previous post, made with the standard 3.3volt 20mA White light LED. They don't really need a driver. If hooked to a DC 5 volt power supply with the proper resistor per each LED don't get warm at all. And 20 of these in a ring already are a pretty impressive light source. And pretty cheap as well, maybe 10 pennies per LED and 30 pennies for 20 resistors.
In my Hermetospheres, I use a black gravel bottom layer that functions as a water reservoir. I believe it's a tumbled glass pellet, you get in any pet store as goldfish bowl substrate. Then a thin layer of Active carbon, on top of this a piece of fly mesh, caped with a thin layer of Orchid substrate that contains peat and bark chips. The orchid soil is pretty much neutral in fertilizer and perfect for growing mosses and gives a more natural look. The active carbon layer is questionable and probably not really needed, but did it anyway. It works pretty well. I copied it from some terrarium video guy from youtube.
The other thing, you might already know, is to only use demineralized water to prevent calcium stains etc. Then if fertilizer is required I do use a syringe with a long blunt needle (eBay) to apply it locally without touching the glass. If tap water is used, it will be a pain in the neck to clean it once staining appears.
The LED ring picture in my previous post, made with the standard 3.3volt 20mA White light LED. They don't really need a driver. If hooked to a DC 5 volt power supply with the proper resistor per each LED don't get warm at all. And 20 of these in a ring already are a pretty impressive light source. And pretty cheap as well, maybe 10 pennies per LED and 30 pennies for 20 resistors.
In my Hermetospheres, I use a black gravel bottom layer that functions as a water reservoir. I believe it's a tumbled glass pellet, you get in any pet store as goldfish bowl substrate. Then a thin layer of Active carbon, on top of this a piece of fly mesh, caped with a thin layer of Orchid substrate that contains peat and bark chips. The orchid soil is pretty much neutral in fertilizer and perfect for growing mosses and gives a more natural look. The active carbon layer is questionable and probably not really needed, but did it anyway. It works pretty well. I copied it from some terrarium video guy from youtube.
The other thing, you might already know, is to only use demineralized water to prevent calcium stains etc. Then if fertilizer is required I do use a syringe with a long blunt needle (eBay) to apply it locally without touching the glass. If tap water is used, it will be a pain in the neck to clean it once staining appears.
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I think I want one too...
