[Harpspiel]

I would agree with @Androgynoid but add a longer session 1-2x/week - say 1 or 2 minutes. That way you soak everything occasionally and just keep the humidity up in between. With careful placement of plants and a mixture of brief misting multiple times a day plus twice a week rainstorms, I have to do very little supplemental misting to keep my 50+ species of orchids (and around 50 species of other plants) in my 65g happy. It doesn't hurt to hand mist once or twice a week especially when I'm establishing something new, but I could leave for two weeks without worrying about anything.

Note: I do a lot more sessions daily, and for longer, than @Androgynoid recommended. I think around 5-6 misting sessions around 15 seconds each. But I live in a very dry environment and would not recommend this schedule for most people.

 

[Harpspiel]

Oh also, I change my light and water settings for winter. My 2x/week 1.5 minute rainstorms become a 1x/week 30 seconds and 1x/week 1 minute (again, keep in mind that I live in a desert and adjust your timings accordingly), and my spotlights change from 6 hours a day to 4 hours a day. Subtle but it works for me.

I have a mutual love affair with pleurothallids, which grow really well for me. Not so with bulbos, however I will say that in my experience they don't like it as wet as pleurothallids, so I probably wouldn't reserve the wettest spots for them (it does depend on species).

 

[Harpspiel]

We seem to like a lot of the same plants! With the telipogoniflora in mind, I strongly recommend my technique of multiple short bursts per day plus longer rainstorms once or twice a week. This should help to keep it nice and moist with no gaps. I think you will find that your humidity stratifies from bottom to top of your tank, so putting the telipogoniflora near the bottom should help keep it nice and moist as well. I would start putting your orchids in, but hold off on the telipogoniflora until you've got your misting dialed in. Lepanthopsis astrophora is wonderful and should be a bit less delicate.

I think Sinningia muscicola will be really happy in that tank! It seems quite tolerant of being on the wet side, and I have seedlings from mine in every corner of my tank. Sinningia pusilla has not been nearly as vigorous, and I'm doing some experimentation to see if it likes slightly drier conditions or if it's just a slower species.

Oh, and you will need to change your misting schedule over time. Things tend to start out quite dry, but the more plants you have and especially the more moss, the more moisture the whole ecosystem will retain, so you won't have to water nearly as much a year from now. Just keep an eye on it.

 

[Harpspiel]

Last thing, I don’t know if you’ve been following recent threads but I highly recommend leaving your orchids on their mounts for a month or two so you can move them around to find the best position. I just hook the wire over whatever bit of protruding bark I can find or lean them against the background.

 

[Harpspiel]

If the roots are wrapped in moss, they should take more than a month to contact the cork and start really digging in - I'd estimate 5 months for most mini orchids.

I killed my last telipogoniflora, sprayed the enclosure with Physan and then forgot it outside overnight. Either leaving the Physan on it or temps down to 40 did in almost everything in that tiny terrarium. I've been looking for another one ever since...

I don't think you'll get the Sinningia to spread up the background on its own. I tried growing it epiphytically when I first got it but I think my tank wasn't wet enough yet and it wasn't happy. I'm going to try that again with some seedlings now. You'll probably want to start it on the ground to be safe, but once you have a bunch to experiment with, I think it would be really cute poking out from that crack in your cork tube and should do fine with just a little soil. Oh, and the seeds will grow right on the leaf litter if it's moist enough - they sprout still in the seed pods up in the air for me.

Here you go, my main tank. I have Sinningias now in my glass bubble too, but they haven't taken off there yet. I'll try to update pics of the bubble soon, lots of growth and new plants.

 

[Harpspiel]

Haha, oh yeah, I guess I hadn't seen pics of your setup so I didn't recognize you.

This might be helpful for the Sinningias, it's how I differentiated my 2 species. I found it pretty hard to differentiate just based on leaves, although when they're side by side you can see that muscicola's leaves are larger, pointer and with more red veins.

The Lepanthes hybrid you mentioned is Sherry Bridham (edit: Sherry Bridygham), and I haven't grown it personally but based on pics I'm not a fan, I think it loses some of the best features of each individual species. I can let you know how my calodictyon does over the summer when my temps hit the upper 80s. I killed my last one by (surprisingly) overwatering it, but that was when I was trying to get stuff to grow on my waterfall and I think I've got the hang of it now (marginals only, I have some Bucephalandras and some liverworts that are happy).

 

[Harpspiel]

View attachment 298959
Popped some things in yesterday, as I'm reasonably confident that they're going to be at least near the moisture level they want. The L. telipogoniflora is still in storage for now, though.

Any suggestions on a micro-mini epiphyte that likes to be outright wet? I have one spot developing on the wall that's pretty sodden most of the time, and I don't think I can correct it without everything else around it drying out too much. I'm sure some moss will like it there, but I was wondering about other candidates. Surely there's one tiny orchid that likes being wet.

Peperomia emarginella likes it wet (right up to water’s edge) and I think it will grow epiphytically, and so far my Barbosella gardneri seems happy pretty wet. Filmy ferns would be a cool option but they’re hard to source. Bucephalandras might work too.

 

[Harpspiel]

Oh Biophytums are supposed to do well wet, and I’ve seen them grown epiphytically with just a little clay, although I haven’t done it myself.