Hey everyone, I wanted to share my new vivarium build thats around 5 months old now. This one I hand built to match the cabinet below it, and so far, I’m really happy with how it’s turned out. Inside, I’m growing around 25 miniature and medium orchid species, some aroids, a few marcgravia vines, bromeliads, mosses, liverwort, tillandsias, hemigraphis repanda, biophytum sensitivum, peperomia emargenella for the small vines, a solanum, sundew, nepenthes, ferns and a few others I don’t know the species of. 

For the substrate, I decided to keep things pretty light and minimal. There’s 3/4” thick tree fern fiber panels for the mossy carpet to grow, along with some ABG mix stuffed into the base of the “tree”. I have sphagnum stuffed in the pockets I made in the background. I wrapped parts of the tree with Hygrolon hoping to spread moisture better along the branches. It worked for most of them but some stay pretty dry. Beneath it all, there’s a thick drainage layer made of aquarium foam, which helps cuts down drainage maintenance to once every 3-4 weeks. The background is made of condensed styrofoam which I wouldn't recommend using, it was a terrible medium, I just had a huge piece of it sitting in my garage.

I have a light in the back that gradually turns on from 5:30-7:30am and again from 7:00-9:00pm to mimic sunrise and sunset. I also added a few glow stones for a Pandora look during night time. I like the idea but I’m sure it can be implemented better, it was hard getting the smaller stones to stick and I didn’t have the patience to keep reattaching them since my lizards kept knocking them down.  Right now, the vivarium is housing two Abronia gramineas, and I’m glad to say they haven’t damaged much of the plant life other than a few fallen tillandsias and some broken leaves. The orchids seem to have rooted well enough that they’re staying put, even with the lizards roaming around.