A great Flickr find – a couple days ago Karlboms orchids favorited a picture of mine; as I usually do, I backtracked to see what sort of things they are up to. Jackpot! Aside from being the EpiWeb people (a material that’s generated a lot of discussion in the dart frog community) they are also doing some amazing things with small vivaria for orchids. I’ve put the following together by running down various threads on the Orchid Source forum.

The core (literally and figuratively) of the setup is a terracotta drain pipe.

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A sheet of glass is siliconed to the bottom, the pipe is filled with water, a piece of EpiWeb is used as a cork (to keep the water in the pipe from becoming algae-choked) and in the latest incarnation a piece of rubber cord is wrapped around the pipe to secure specimens.

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An obvious warning – rainwater or RO water only – and a less obvious one – fertilize from the outside only.

As Ron Popeil would say, “But wait! There’s more!” Mikael encloses the pipes in lexan tubes.

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On the first picture you see the top of the lid on the nanoviv. I have cut out a piece of the glass to allow air to pass out.
Under the glass you can see the PC fan that circulates air inside the cover.
The light set-up is made by using 12V halogen lamps that sits on a metal strip that is covered with copper foil. The lamps is attached to and connected to the “rail” by very strong neodym magnets. This allows me to move the lamps freely and makes a minimal fixture.

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Here you can see the way I mount the fan. By using neodym magnet (one on each side of the cover)I can set the fan in all directions without destroying the plastic. (this fan is from another vivarium). I use fans that are only 40×40 mm.

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Really amazing stuff – you can see the entire nano-viv Flickrset by clicking on the picture below.