Terrarium care process

[Simland]

Hi,

I'd like to get a sense of how you guys go about taking care of your terrariums, so I was wondering if anyone could provide details of their process / schedule?

For instance, I'd like to know how often your change the water, the substrate and anything else that needs changing in your terrarium. But I'd also like to know more about the minutiae: how you go about cleaning everything.

I'd like to hear from anyone willing to share and even more so from people who have a lot of terrariums and who've had to optimize their process.

I'm asking, because I'm starting to have a lot of terrariums, myself, to take care of and I'd like to be more efficient.

By the way, do you use cloth to clean the glass or paper towels? If you use cloth, how do you clean the cloth after using it, so that it won't accumulate bacteria and spread them around wherever it goes, while still making sure you won't spread harmful residues on the glass the next time you clean?

 

[manderkeeper]

I use paper towels and go through lots of them lol.

 

[dannyyyallenn]

Lots of healthy plants can help with cleanliness as they absorb waste products. Ferns and moss are great and fairly easy to maintan. I'm not sure what set-ups you normally use, but if you have a lot I would suggest a simple gravel, inch of dirt, covered with some sort of live moss. For even quicker cleans I would omit the dirt and just do gravel-moss. Cleaning that would be a simple process. If your moss is live and healthy it really wouldn't need to be changed. As for the gravel, just remove the moss from the top, toss the gravel in a large bin, and rinse it with dechlorinated water. Just swish it around, pour off the water, repeat, until the next time you pour water over the gravel it pours off clear. Dump the gravel back, place your moss back over it, mist, and your good to go. Personally I prefer more complex and naturalistic set-up, but it becomes expensive and very time consuming to take care of several set-ups like that if you don't get a balanced eco-system.
Aquatic sections just need the water changed. Decor, unless really filthy, can normally be left the way it is because beneficial bacteria normally live on hardscape items. If you don't have a lot of plants in your water and a well established nitrogen cycle you probably need to entirely change the water every week or two. Once the gravel is scooped out of each terrarium its as simple as pouring out the water and adding dechlorinated water back in. I have a stable nitrogen cycle and loads of plants in my aquarium and I do 20% changes once every two weeks which works fine.

 

[jewett]

Hi Daniel,

What lighting do you use to keep your moss and ferns alive? I like the idea of adding moss and ferns to my tiger and marbled set ups (deep Rubbermaids with about 4-6 inches of substrate) for some time but do not know what fixture would be best.

Additionally, how much time do you keep the light on?

Thanks so much!

HJ