FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Option 1: Rainforest highland cp terrarium
Equipment
50 gallon aquarium tank with airtight top with 1 inch of ventilation on left side, 3 Yescom panels (blue white), humidifier system if needed
Soil: 2:2:1:1 peat moss, perlite, fir bark, shredded lfsm
Plants: Multiple heliamphora species, Nepenthes St. Gaya, Brocchinia Reducta, Drosera Adelae, Utricularia Purpurea Tropical orchid native to South American Highlands, live red sphagnum moss, live golden sphagnum moss
Conditions: 75% humidity, indoor temperatures a constant 65-70 degrees, shallow amount of distilled water on the bottom to avoid standing water but provide humidity. Can add pumice for mountain aesthetic.
Option 2 Temperate cp 20 gallon terrarium with dormancy provided
Equipment: 20 gallon aquarium tank with no top, 2 Yescom panels red blue orange, bubbler
Soil: 3:2 peat moss, perlite
Plants: Sarrecenia Purpurea venosa/Sarrecenia Rosea, Sarrecenia Psitiscina (NO TALL varieties please), Drosera Binata, Pinguicula Primuliflora, Utricularia Gibba, Aldrovanda Vesicula, Orange Fringed Orchid, Salvinia, Bog cranberry, Live sphagnum moss (green/normal), Live red sphagnum moss
Conditions: winter dormancy provided inside an extra refrigerator for three months every year. Outside in direct sunlight but under lights during cloudy days (we get a lot in spring in the Northeast united states). Lots of distilled water on the bottom but not in excession. A plastic undrained container planted in the soil for the aquatic plants to float freely.
Please give any suggestions and vote which one would be more interesting. Much appreciated. Or I can work on both. Will update you when I am finished.

Thanks I look forward to sharing the results.

Just skimmed over the post, have a few thoughts:
1.

• Unless you trim it often, St. Gaya is going to outgrow that and fairly quickly - even in a 50 gallon tank. If it was me personally, I would be looking more at intermediate or low highland pure species which tend to grow slower, though I'm not the right person to list off specific ones. Off the top of my head though, burbidgae would probably be my first choice for a Gaya substitute here.
• Imo the helis especially will probably hate the peat/perlite heavy mix and struggle or crash from being kept too wet. Also, if you top water at all and have any exposed soil, perlite is going to look awful eventually. I would sub pumice for perlite, drop 1 part each peat and pumice, and add 1 part rinsed turface (or SafeTSorb if you have a Tractory Supply nearby), maybe adding a layer of extra peat on top in areas you plan to have live sphagnum if it seems needed. Bark isn't really needed and would just break down eventually but I get using it for aesthetic purposes, and shredded lfs would compact too much to have any real purpose here. In all, I'd do something more like 1:1:1:1:1 or 2:2:2:1:2 turface/peat/pumice/bark/lfs (chopped, not shredded).
• U. purpurea is pretty finicky, at least it was for me and from some other threads I had read when I was preparing for mine. You may not have issues with it, but just giving you a heads up.
• I would be very surprised if you didn't end up needing a humidifier if for no other reason than to keep temperatures in check, along with a few 80 or 120mm pc fans for airflow. Even if your lights are outside the tank and you have a ventilation strip, temps will still most likely get hot inside after a while. Running a humidifier at night will also net you a 4ish degree drop, which combined with a 4-5 degree rise during the day will get you a small night drop that may help the helis and nep in the long run. It takes a lot of fighting back and forth between ventilation, airflow and humidification to get both temps and humidity where you want them without an active cooling mechanism though, and you'll need to make sure you have that in check before you get any plants. I'd also add an Inkbird thermostat as a kill switch for the lights set for around 78 degrees, just in case, say, the humidifier died or ran out of water or your house's AC died while you're not at home. My helis hit 86 the other day for just a few minutes because my AC went out and I didn't realize my house was burning up and I didn't think to program a kill switch trigger for the lights into my controller scripts. They survived albeit unhappily, but I probably would've had losses if I hadn't literally been sitting right next to them to cut the switch as soon as I realized.

2.

• Same thing here w/ the pumice sub, perlite is the devil if you're wanting something aesthetically pleasing and plan to top water ever. Otherwise the mix looks fine other than maybe go 1:1 or swap ratios due to potential for standing water in the bottom. Personally I'd drill the side to add a bulkhead before I touched anything else on the tank. An ounce of prevention and all that.
• Gibba is a weed so you should be fine there, but Aldrovanda may be tricky. I see you've already planned for a bubbler and Salvinia though, so you may be fine here.
• Binata is a weird choice here and while it would probably survive fridge dormancy and probably do okay, outside of 'small red form' and maybe some other uncommon varieties I can't think of offhand it would easily grow taller than it seems you're wanting. Intermedia, rotundifolia, and tokaensis would make much more sense here, or even hybrida and intermedia x capi if you wanted to get more upright and fancy with it. Capillaris (and probably brevifolia), would also probably survive fridge dormancy, but even if they didn't then as long as you let them seed it still shouldn't be a problem.
• The primuliflora will probably do best if it's planted in the shade of the purpurea/rosea, since they don't seem to like quite as much sun as the sarrs will want. Planifolia though seemed to do better in more sun for me. I'll also add that I wouldn't even bother with moving them under lights when it's cloudy. They have plenty of cloudy days in the wild too, and I have one massive rosea/flava hybrid on my covered porch that's never seen full sun in its life and if it's supposed to be bothered by that then apparently someone forgot to let it know.

That's all. I think you're closer on both of these than my wall of text suggests, mainly just a few minor adjustments to the soil mixes to stave off root rot and you're pretty much there.