# Pleurothallis allenii orchid shoots dying



## kromar (Jun 6, 2015)

i have 2 Pleurothallis allenii IOSPE PHOTOS and since i had them not all of the new shoots make it, recently i think its gotten more so only about 1 out of 10 new leaves make it and the others die
however they are blooming almost all the time and look really nice so im wondering what i could do to make more new shoots or possibly all of them survive.

i planted the orchids on some fern tree and have a bit of moss growing around them but make sure to take some out from time to time.

the temperature is around 23 during night and up to 27 during day and humidity about 85 during night and around 78 during the day with a couple of short (5s) mist intervals.

here is a picture of some dying new shoots and the orchids so maybe someone can give me some hint what could cause this.


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## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

Yes, you're right, she is a spectacular vivarium plant, and should be doing better with the new leaves. I saw a very rare, bloom related sight, about 3 or 4 days ago. For the first time in 4 plus months, I could not find a bloom or a bud on my P. allenii. You have to love it when an orchid NOT blooming, is a rare sight!! Other than that, she's been blooming for months! She's back in bloom already.

You say she blooms well for you. To me, this implies acceptable lighting. Not enough light and they don't bloom well. 

I'm going to go with water/ventilation/circulation, which are all kind of interrelated, at least as far as viv dwelling orchids are concerned. 
Do you have an internal fan? Adding an internal fan makes a world of difference with orchids. Personally, I would not put most orchids into a vivarium without an internal circulation fan. Lepanthes may be an exception to this. Orchids hate wet leaves. Repeated wet spots, left too long, make tiny black dead spots on your older leaves, and in my experience, can easily rot away fresh growth.
Anything you can do to limit that, or to dry them up faster, will help. 
More ventilation would help. Orchids prefer it a little dryer. About 70 or 75% would be a better humidity level to aim for. 
You can also try limiting your misting, to only one, 1 minute long or so, misting cycle in the morning. This keeps your leaves dryer, and may be enough to drop your humidity where you want it. Frogs should still breed fine for you. When I dropped to one cycle a day, I found I had to add some sphagnum to some ferns, and below a couple mosses, for them to be able to hold enough water for the full day.

You do want her roots to be moist all day. Moist...not saturated. Ideally, you would mist her one time in the morning, and by the next morning, she should still be just slightly damp. She could even go till the sphag was just barely dry to the touch, but still has some pliability to the sphag mount if you poke it with a finger. She's not a plant you want the sphag mount to ever fully dry, till the sphagnum is crispy dry. She's not going to instantly drop dead if she does have her sphag go crispy dry, but you want to avoid drying her daily.

If Spaff has any comments for you, he's been doing viv orchids a lot longer than I have.


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## Groundhog (Dec 17, 2006)

I agree with Pumilio--the plant's base is a bit too wet. This set up does not need moss at the base of the plant.


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## kromar (Jun 6, 2015)

thanks for the feedback, im already reducing misting but want to go slow with it since abrupt changes since im pretty happy with the overall plant growth but want to try to fine-tune it for some orchids. 

i have a fan but its only triggering at night when the humidity gets to high and due to the internal circulation keeps humidity a bit lower (i have a eu tank so theres vents). maybe that is not the best but the leaves are most of the time dry and there are only a hand full of leaves that died since i got the orchids which might already be about a year ago:O

i removed most of the moss that covers one of the orchids and will see that i can keep her moss free and see how that goes, that should keep the roots a bit less wet which might be the issue for the new leafs.
the other one i keep a bit moss so i can see what works better with lower humidity.

i changed the misting from 15s at 12:00 and 15s at 18:00 to
10s at 12:00, [email protected]:00 [email protected]:00 and [email protected] 18:00 with the idea that i get it a bit dryer during the night but it seems from the water usage that its using more than the old cycle so i will probably remove 2 afternoon mistings again and go with a total of 15s.
i have a lot of nozzles so thats probably why i can keep the misting quite low, i do a 1m misting from time to time but that is really draining the tank


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## Spaff (Jan 8, 2011)

I agree with the above that your plant is staying too wet on the leaves, especially new growths. I like your idea to run the fan at night (leaves staying wet as temps naturally drop at night is a recipe for rot), but it may be helpful to run it 24/7. If there is a mister misting directly on this one, you may want to reposition that. The substrate seems to be wet enough that you could keep it growing well with indirect misting. 

In general, this species is much more succulent than other Pleurothallid species and can handle drying out more often. I've grown this one in a tank but also have it set up in my greenhouse, which does not have very stable humidity during the summer due to the ventilation fan running often in an attempt to keep temps down.


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## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

Yes, as you've noted, the amount of time you run your misters, is dependent upon many variables, like viv size, how many misters you have, what plants you grow, and what the humidity might be like, outside of the viv.
I used to run 3 smaller cycles per day, a 30 second run in the morning, and 2, 15 second runs throughout the day. I just added up the times and put it on a single cycle, so my orchids did not have to dry off 3 times.
I run my fans on a repeat timer, 10 minutes on and 10 minutes off, day and night.

There is another thing to consider when deciding when to run your fans. 
Many plants have tiny, sometimes microscopic, hairs, called trichomes, covering the surface of the leaves. In conditions without moving air, these trichomes trap a tiny pocket of air around each leaf. The plant can then quickly deplete the available co2 in that tiny little microclimate. There can be fresh, co2 rich air an eighth of an inch away, yet utterly useless to your plant until you move it. Because of this, you really should see an increase in growth and health, in the vast majority of plants. Mosses, bryophytes, and delicate filmy ferns would be exceptions. Keep an eye on those while increasing circulation. They may want a bit more sphagnum to keep them moist in the increased circulation.


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## kromar (Jun 6, 2015)

Spaff said:


> I agree with the above that your plant is staying too wet on the leaves, especially new growths. I like your idea to run the fan at night (leaves staying wet as temps naturally drop at night is a recipe for rot), but it may be helpful to run it 24/7. If there is a mister misting directly on this one, you may want to reposition that. The substrate seems to be wet enough that you could keep it growing well with indirect misting.
> 
> In general, this species is much more succulent than other Pleurothallid species and can handle drying out more often. I've grown this one in a tank but also have it set up in my greenhouse, which does not have very stable humidity during the summer due to the ventilation fan running often in an attempt to keep temps down.


i have the fan controlled via a raspberry to only go at a certain humidity and since it gets more humid during the night due to temperature drops it most of the time runs during the night. 
so i could try lowering that threshold a bit, but first i try that with the less water thing to see the influence of one or the other.
i read that keeping the humidity low at night helps with avoiding rot and helps with the well being of orchids, i guess that was the inspiration for the fan setting

there is no direct mist but the misting is directly above it, so the water runs down and keeps the treefern and some moss wet. so reducing the misting should help make the ground a little bit less wet.

oh that information with the succulent is very interesting and that it can go quite a bit dryer




Pumilo said:


> Yes, as you've noted, the amount of time you run your misters, is dependent upon many variables, like viv size, how many misters you have, what plants you grow, and what the humidity might be like, outside of the viv.
> I used to run 3 smaller cycles per day, a 30 second run in the morning, and 2, 15 second runs throughout the day. I just added up the times and put it on a single cycle, so my orchids did not have to dry off 3 times.
> I run my fans on a repeat timer, 10 minutes on and 10 minutes off, day and night.
> 
> ...


ohh this is some new brainfood that you serve here thanks a lot for this, i have never heard of this micro hair thing before
i did some test with ventilation in the past and it seems so far to be the best to keep humidity relatively steady and not dry out the moss to only have a small circulation fan.
i tried some fan the blows air in and out but both caused huuge swings in climate which the plants did not like as far as i could tell.

also i have what i think is called a "euro tank" with a mesh in the front-bottom and on top so there is probably always some air circulation going on which i assume would be enough for the co2 exchange that you described?


amazing feedback, i should have asked this question earlier


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## kromar (Jun 6, 2015)

its been a while and the tank slowly gets a bit dryer, today there are a couple of new shoots so im curious to see how many of them will make it


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## kromar (Jun 6, 2015)

out of 8 new shoots 7 survived:O this is really awesome, thanks for all the valuable feedback on the topic.

im looking forward to the next round of new shoots to see if they keep surviving at that level.

heres a pic of it currently and if you look close you can see soem "red" leaves which are not fully developed that are the new ones.


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## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

I can't see the picture, but it's great you've got her figured out!


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## kromar (Jun 6, 2015)

Pumilo said:


> I can't see the picture, but it's great you've got her figured out!


hm strange i guess i need to download my images in the future from this crappy google foto thing and upload them manually to avoid these issues... if only they made a foto share link that works... 

here it is again


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