Can Ceph thrive in a lowland tank?

[Wayne Jenski]

I have nearly set up my lowland (nepenthes) tank and I was wondering if cephalotus could thrive (not just live) in such an environment. There seems to be a lot of contrary (and passionate) opinions on the subject of night/ day temp and humidity, whether or not dormancy should be accommodated, and similar subjects. Has anyone had luck growing cephs in a lowland tank?

[brokken]

I have.

Currently my ceph resides in my lowland tank and though I've had it for only a year, it seems to be thriving just fine. When I got the plant from an eBay seller, it looked very healthy and had several growing points, but within days all the pitchers had died. (it is not uncommon due to shipping shock - from what I've read in this forum) However, since then the plant has put up a whole host of new pitchers and the plant shows a lot of vigor. Another smaller plant that I got from my local CP nursery has also gone from 3 pitchers to about a dozen. My setup consists of a 55 gallon terrarium that I keep filled with water about 1/4 of the way. There is a fishtank heater in there that keeps the water warm to about 75 degrees. There are PVC spacers that hold up plastic grating and a bed of live sphagnum on top of that. This serves to isolate the pots from the water and wick controlled amounts of water such that at any given time, there's only about an inch of water that reaches the pots. This terrarium lives outside all year round in our California weather with temps fluctuating from about 70 degrees to about 90 in the summer. The plants get about 2 hours of direct sun, but about 10 hours of indirect sunlight. The tops of the terrariums have glass, but it only covers about 3/4 of the opening to the tank and the glass is propped open to allow air circulation and prevent stagnant air from becoming too bad a problem.

I hope this info helps!

[Wayne Jenski]

Thanks for the reply; this makes me feel a lot better about my set up which incidentally is very similar to yours sans the sphagnum on top of the grating. This sounds like a great idea, but I am having a hard time visualizing. Do you have a picture? Thanks, again.

[brokken]

Certainly.

Started out with this:



And then moved to a larger terrarium:



then added the sphagnum:



And this is the view from the top:



The Cephs are looking a lot better than they do even even in these pictures:

[Wayne Jenski]

Thanks for the images! That really looks amazing- so much nicer with the moss than the sterile grating alone. I have a few follow up questions . . .

The waterline is about halfway through the thickness of the moss layer; this allows it to wick, right? Where did you get the moss? I imagine it is a very specific species of sphagnum?

By the way, I am so jealous of your Californian weather . . . an outdoor set up like that is difficult in Boston. Thanks for the information!

[brokken]

Hi there!

The water fluctuates depending on the weather and my willingness to overcome lazyness. You should allow the water level to fall below the pots ocassionally so you don't end up with an anoxic environment within the pot, but not so low that the moss starts to dry out. My best advice to you would be that you add a couple of gallons to the tank then let it fall to the grate level before you add more water. A day or so won't make much of a difference.

I'm sure that someone would be able to identify the species of the moss, but that someone is not me. I got mine from a vendor on eBay and I've not seen that person offer any more since. Some people will tell you that you can use dry sphagnum moss and the dormant spores from it will eventually result in live sphagnum once more, but I've not been lucky that way. I had to find a source of live moss and put it there myself. Large beds of sphagnum seem to create an environment that is auspicious for its own growth so I would recommend that you get a gallon bag of the stuff to start with rather than just a few strands of it spread throughout the terrarium.

[dimitar]

This topic is very interesting.
Thanks for sharing experience guys. I also grow Ceph very successfully in a lowland tank along with lowland species Neps. They like very much high humidity and don't have problems with high temperatures that are inside. So far I haven't got fungal attacks. Maybe my lighting is weaker because they don't have much colour but look healthy.
Here are some pics.