FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Quick pic of my kitchen grow space heliamphora.
Happy growing,
-@.

Thanks for sharing your garden with us; it's beautiful. Good luck with jacksplants and keep us informed.
GranPa

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What are the temp and humidity conditions? I could never imagine growing my Heli with no foggers and chillers. I've been talking with two other heli hobbyists and we are brainstorming more and more elaborate enclosures.

Typically the day time temps do not exceed 78F and nights are down to 60F for the most part. There are the odd warmer evenings. RH is usually around 40% during the day and as much as 50% at night.

I would LOVE to be involved in these "elaborate enclosure brainstorm sessions" you speak of! I have a pretty clunky highland enclosure I Frankensteined together myself consisting of a chest freezer, a 23 gallon reservoir of antifreeze, a 1600gph submersible pump and a 4500 btu heat exchanger all automated with a Herpstat 6 from Spyder Robotics and a HydroX by Trolmaster linked to my smartphone for data logging and remote management for when I'm working out of town. I can get nights down to 48F if I want to, but it won't hold it for more than a few hours with the current size of the reservoir. I also have a temperature gradient that developed accidentally and I decided to exploit it. The enclosure is 6 feet long by roughly 2 feet high and wide. By putting up a few glass barriers and a ceramic heater on the far end I am able to get ultra highland temps on one side, intermediate temps in the middle and lowland conditions on the far side. If it was a strictly highland setup I'm sure I could get lower temps for longer. I keep it set to between 55 and 58 depending on the season, which results in a steady 52 to 55 for 5 to 8 hours respectively. I have a few helis in that set up as well as about 30 juveniles. N. villosa, N. macrophylla, N. jamban, U. quelchii, U. humboldtii etc. all do quite well there however I must say, and I still have as much difficulty accepting this as anyone else, the heliamphora in the kitchen grow space appears to be much happier than those in the enclosure.

So... Where do these brainstorm sessions take place? On the forums?

Happy growing!
-@

iamjacksplants wrote: RH is usually around 40% during the day and as much as 50% at night.

I would LOVE to be involved in these "elaborate enclosure brainstorm sessions" you speak of! I have a pretty clunky highland enclosure I Frankensteined together myself consisting of a chest freezer, a 23 gallon reservoir of antifreeze, a 1600gph submersible pump and a 4500 btu heat exchanger all automated with a Herpstat 6 from Spyder Robotics and a HydroX by Trolmaster linked to my smartphone for data logging and remote management for....

So... Where do these brainstorm sessions take place? On the forums?

This is rigging it way more elaborate than anything I have imagined, so you probably would be the lead in the discussion lol.
If you look up divideandculture on instagram he is one of the people (and has some heli set up posts throughout... also a youtube ), the other is just through my Facebook messenger. What I've been trying to figure out more of is just what the absolute best set up would be, originally I was going cheap as possible with peltiers, but eventually want to move to a temp controlled chest freezer. But then also got the idea of running water through tubing by the fans through an aquarium chiller to cool everything off (like D&C). But then I started to question how much of a temp drop I really need, but since I am running low on space I need to upgrade a terrarium anyways so may as well go all out. But then I've also been keeping mine around 95% humidity (just have been growing them like this since the start) and didn't really think they may not need it that high. I dropped everything down to about 70% RH now. This also helps with the giant basin of water that pools in the terrarium from all my fogger activity, so I either had to figure out a drain system or put in a submersible pump to get most of it out. I sort of like the basin there as a humidity buffer though, in case anything goes wrong (i.e. I'm away and no one refills the fogger). Then I wondered if water chiller hooked up to the basin would be enough for a temp drop, of if I should pump it behind fans like the other guy.

In the end everything is fine, and I can have a nice small collection of Heli with my current set up, but it's not anything "display worthy" and I'm pretty much out of room to get any other species...But I guess the Sarracenioides I always wanted is growing to adult size and dividing and that's all I really wanted (until someone came along with a new sarracenioides cultivar that looks like purp surf)...but still...I know one day I'm going to jump in and upgrade everything so I'm just trying to figure out the best possible grow set up.

Thanks! It sounds more complicated than it is. I've seen some of Divide and Culture's stuff and it looks pretty awesome, both plants and builds.

I've never messed with peltiers. Always seemed like it would be inadequate for large applications. My enclosure is 6 feet long by a little over 2 feet wide and high, so peltiers seemed out of the question and I already had double or triple the the growing area of a large chest freezer, so that seemed like a step backward. Also, the layout of my setup allows for viewing most of the plants through the sliding glass door in the front. Most chest freezers won't allow for that without some pretty heavy modification.

So...I felt I had two choices - air cooled or liquid cooled. I picked up a 5 cu.ft. chest freezer and a 6 inch inline horticultural fan, 490 cfm. On full blast it is enough to knock over plants. More than enough for my application as well as almost any future expansion. I built duct work to recirculate the air in the enclosure through a series of baffles I built in the freezer. This actually worked quite well, however it produced a great deal of water shed. The high humidity of the enclosure air would condensate on the interior of the freezer. This would freeze during the day when the freezer was not in use, then thaw every night with the night drop cooling operation. This process produced over 2 gallons of water each night. That got pretty old pretty quickly. Instead of building a water management system, I disassembled the baffles and replaced them with a reservoir filled with antifreeze and installed a heat exchanger in the ductwork, just before the air reenters the enclosure. I also rerouted the duct work so that it just takes air from the middle of the enclosure and transports it to the end of the enclosure - no more freezer in circuit. I started with a 13 gallon reservoir and an 1100 gph submersible pump. I am currently using a 23 gallon reservoir and a 1900 gph pump. Ultimately a 7 cu.ft. freezer or larger would be best as it would accommodate a 50 gallon reservoir. I would also like to add a small aquarium chiller inline on the return side of the coolant circuit to cool the fluid off before returning it to the reservoir. I believe those upgrades would allow the system to operate during the day in the summer to keep temps under 80F and still have enough thermal mass left in the system at night to produce any desired temp drops.

The current set up keeps day temps around 80F using evaporative cooling and provides night temps in the low 50s for 4 hours or the mid 50s for 6 to 8 hours. I usually switch the set point every couple days. This system would work much better if I didn't insist on keeping my lowland plants in the same enclosure. The ceramic heater I use to keep the lowland side above 68F no doubt reduces the efficiency of the cooling system dramatically.

Depending on the size of the area you are trying to cool, a chilled basin of water in the bottom can definitely help manage temps. I spoke with a grower at an LACPS meeting who does just that. At night the cold water from the basin is then circulated through a heat exchanger/fan set up. This is for a dedicated heliamphora grow area, so his target temps are not as low at night as mine are. I believe he was getting under 78F in the day and right around 60F at night.

If you get a large enough aquarium chiller, just that and a heat exchanger/fan setup will do great. The only problem is cost of large enough chillers - when I was looking a 1hp chiller was over 1000$. My chest freezer was like 160$.

What size grow area are you hoping to cool? What are your target temps?
Happy growing!
-@.

Why not just set up an aquarium with a clear plastic lid and some growlights above the plants. Broccinia reducta requires similar conditions to helamphora and it does well in my setup.

The explanation above your post is my ultra highland cooling system. Most of my heliamphora grow in house humidity on my kitchen counter.