FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Sponsored by FlytrapStore.com

Discuss Nepenthes plant care here

Moderator: Matt

By NatchGreyes
Posts:  205
Joined:  Thu Jan 23, 2014 5:17 pm
#195031
snapperhead51 wrote:personally I would not bother to much , your plants will adapt well enough , the temp drop of the lights going out will usually be enough , mine grow in47c to 38c and night its 25 to 28 summer, and up and down , winter huge difference
2c night up to 12 to 18c day , and they cope fine , dont get to hung up about massive temp drops in micro climate , its give you to many head aches a more stable temp will work just fine on high land plant as well . works just fine in my lab
P1190919.JPG
Two things:

(1) Snapperhead, do you have a photo thread? Your setup looks incredible.

(2) I grow highlanders and lowlanders in NH. The lowlanders I grow in a (pretty much sealed) 55 gallon terrarium with 4 bulb T5s on top, the highlanders I grow without the terrarium. In winter, I keep the temp in the house at 70 during the day, 60 at night. The T5s heat up the terrarium a bit more, probably around 10 degrees. So, I get a temp drop with lowlanders. (Probably more significantly than highlanders, though I do keep some highlanders, mostly younger, smaller plants in the terrarium and then harden them off for the house as they get bigger). I've found that I don't have any problems with them getting too cold. Honestly, except for extremely sensitive plants like N. clipeata, which requires temps above 55 in order to survive, most species will do fine with your conditions. And, if you keep them in a terrarium/use grow lights, you'll get a natural temp fluctuation without any special equipment.
NatchGreyes liked this
By bananaman
Posts:  2059
Joined:  Sat Jan 01, 2011 2:54 am
#195034
So I mostly just need to get brighter lights-just like I suspected I would.
Thanks for saving me about $300 to set up a strong Peltier element and CPU cooler!

I'll probably get a 20 gallon terrarium and some 24" T5's. Unfortunately, I'll have to get them online: I have not found a source around here that sells anything but 24" T8's or T12's. My current terrarium uses 18" T8's (it is a 10 gallon), and barely heats up. I'll probably go with as many bulbs as possible, which should help a lot. Either that, or I'll get this hood to put on my current terrarium. Do you think that 4 T5's around 10cm above my plants will be enough light? :lol:

Thanks again!
By Sander
Posts:  1226
Joined:  Thu Nov 29, 2012 6:29 pm
#195049
All i can say that i am impressed, i would not have expected heliamphoras thriving under those conditions snapper.
As for bananaman, when i live by myself i might try the peltier idea (since it will cost be about 10-20 bucks to build max =]
By bananaman
Posts:  2059
Joined:  Sat Jan 01, 2011 2:54 am
#195063
Firstly, the terraium I'd want to cool contains 0.0378541 cubic meters of air. The temperature is about 23 degrees Celsius. The density of air at this temperature is about 1.195 kilograms per cubic meters. This means the in the tank weighs about 45.25 grams. The specific heat capacity of air at this temperature is 1.005 kilojoules per kilogram per degrees Kelvin. This simplifies to 1.005 joules per gram per degrees Celsius.
I want to lower the temperature around 10 degrees Celsius, which means that because Q=mCΔT, 454.618 Joules will have to be removed from the terrarium. While cooling, a Peltier cooler is around 4 times more inefficient than standard refrigeration. Average refrigeration removes about 3.41 watt-hours of energy per 2.5575 watt-hours of energy applied. This means that a Peltier element should remove about 3.41 watt-hours of energy per 10.23 watt-hours of energy applied. This means that 12.276 kilojoules of energy should be removed in a perfect world by a 10 watt Peltier element.

However, because a Peltier has a very small surface area, it will be even more horribly inefficient at cooling a tank without some way to increase its surface area and a way to move air over this larger surface area. A cpu cooler would effectively increase surface area of the element from 1600 square millimeters to about 20645 square millimeters, which would make it somewhat more efficient. However, if I wanted to get better cooling efficiency, I'd add a fan on the inside. This would generate some heat as well.

This is assuming a perfectly insulated terrarium with no extra sources of heat. However, the surrounding air will be constantly heating the terrarium, reducing the efficiency even more.

I've seen online that a 50W Peltier element cannot remove the heat from a 18W fluorescent light bulb in a typical terrarium. Therefore, I've concluded that it will be next to impossible to cool the terrarium with any Peltier element tat you can get for less than $100. Also, I'd need 2 cpu heatsinks and fans. Plus, the heat that the hot side gives off would also seep into the terrarium.
bananaman liked this
By cpbobby
Posts:  170
Joined:  Wed Oct 03, 2012 9:42 am
#195066
just responding to the op but

68-72 isn't too cold for lowlanders.....not ideal but not too cold. well it should get cooler when you turn the lights off. other than that for a small terrarium I would imagine if you have the terrarium insulated well, a small/portable evaporative cooler should do the job for 60 bux or less.
By Plants Revenge
Posts:  29
Joined:  Thu Jan 24, 2013 6:25 pm
#195102
bananaman wrote:The problem here with a swamp cooler is that the humidity in my house is 20-40%, and the terrarium would be higher, around 60-80% or higher. At those humanities, swamp coolers are terrible at cooling...
Well I was thinking that you'd have the swamp cooler pull the dry air from the house in, and then pump the cooled air out into the tank. That would work, wouldn't it? Maybe I don't understand how swamp coolers work though...

I just ordered a swamp cooler to try and cool my tank at night (20% RH in room, 70%+ in tank). I plan on just having it blow the cooled air around the outside of the tank which I'm hoping will suck heat out of the tank. I'll let you know the results once it's up and running.
By Ae9803
Posts:  532
Joined:  Mon Mar 08, 2010 2:55 am
#196113
I use a portable ac to cool my HL's at night, I get about 80 f during the day, and I get down to about 59f at night roughly, the plants tend to do well. :) Mind you, I grow them in a growtent 8 x 8 in a second bedroom :)
User avatar
By Maiden
Posts:  1049
Joined:  Tue Sep 10, 2013 12:46 am
#196131
In my setup, for winter i just put the terraria next to a open window at night, this way i can reach a 8C temperature, and i raise the heater to get a day temp of 23C. In the summer, i run a A/C. The air flux is directly on the closed terra. This way a little air flow always running into the tank. This way i reach a day temp of 25C max. And the night i keep the A/C running the same way, i just add 2-3 icepaks to the setup. So in the hot summer nights, my terrariums stay at 18C. Even if the temps outside are at 30C+

Of course, you have to find the right method for your setup!

Hope this help.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

I'm seeing a similar thing with nearly all of […]

My sundew isn’t eating!

Sadly my leaf cuttings haven’t grown probabl[…]

Drosera germination time

Wow! Thank you very much, everyone!

More additions! Thanks Secretariat73! S. leucophy[…]

Transaction with Secretariat73

I must concur. Despite the best efforts of our dea[…]

So far, not less than five days apart. Humidity va[…]

Argh! Just 4 days left in the photo contest and we[…]

SASE received. Order is fulfilled. Return envelope[…]

Support the community - Shop at FlytrapStore.com!