FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

I have a 29 Biocube aquarium that I want to turn into a terrarium, and it should be a good size. The usable space is about an 18" square, and there's a hood that includes a light and ventilation fans. I'm not sure how bright the light is, but it's a pretty good one.

I've recently ordered some live sphagnum for a project, but I turned out to need much less sphagnum than I thought. That, and, as compensation for not shipping the moss on time, they sent me a lot of extra. I now have roughly four square feet of sphagnum moss, and I want to use at least most of that for this.

My thought is that I can make a false bottom in just the corner third of the terrarium, put a peat/perlite mix over that, and fill the rest of the space with sphagnum. The sphagnum chunks are a few inches thick, and they'd keep getting thicker, so I could keep an inch or so of water in the bottom without flooding any plants that were growing in the sphagnum. I could also plant things in the peat area, and I'd have some mopani wood and some granite chunks for hardscape.

This would be a bog terrarium, and I'd put smaller sundews, some bladderwort, and tropical pings in it. I have a N. sanguinea that I'd like to plant in one area, as well. I know it'll get big, but I should be able to feed it out a gap in the lid once it starts to vine, and it can get to a couple feet long before then.

I'd also plant some non-carnivorous companion plants, including a couple species of terrestrial orchids if possible. Any suggestions on that? It'd need to be smaller, non-invasive plants that liked to be relatively wet.

Any general advice?

Be careful about that sanguinea. Before long you might have nothing but a glass cube full of nepenthes leaves. I would stick with maybe some smaller nepenthes, sundews and bladderworts, and if you want to try pings make sure you keep them in their own pots sunk into the substrate to let them dry out a bit over their winter succulent period. It seems like a great idea though!