Hello! A friend gave me this terrarium as a gift, he bought it in a store. The instructions said to not do much in terms of maintenance beside trimming the leaves and spraying some water once every other month. However after a couple of weeks the moss started to become yellowish and inside it’s like a bit dirty with roots growing on the glass. Also some leaves from the bonsai tree fell and are now rotting. What should I do to maintain it properly? Thank you!!
by ViolinistCheap5321
1 Comment
Just to preface, this is going to be quite hard to maintain as a beginner, but I’ll try my best to explain clearly, and hopefully this works well for you.
Firstly the soil should stay damp, but not fully saturated where air cannot move between the particles. So you will have to maintain the moisture level by looking at the soil and noting when it changes colour or looks a bit dry. Then you should top up the water a bit either by spraying or with a watering can (spraying is easier) with rainwater or distilled, not tap water or mineral. Water a little bit, wait for the soil to absorb it, then see if it looks moist enough after 10 mins or so. You may only have to do this once a month as the guidance suggested, or longer than that depending on how good the seal is.
The moss has gone yellow because it is stressed for some reason, likely it does not have good contact with the soil and has dried out because of that, in which case you should press it into the soil. Or there may be some mould growing on it from the dead ficus leaves, which you should remove when they drop (in this sort of terrarium at least). The moss may recover, if not you can take some of the remaining green moss and plant it in amongst the dead. Just make sure to firmly insert the individual pieces of moss through the structure of the dead moss, so it can absorb water from the soil.
For the ficus, you should keep the terrarium in bright *indirect* sunlight (not direct as that will cook the whole thing), or use bright grow lights. Also turn the whole thing around periodically, so all sides can get light. You may have to trim some branches or leaves if they are touching the top or sides of the glass. I wouldn’t really expect the ficus to live a long time in this enclosure without well aerated soil and more ventilation, but that’s no big deal, if it does die just use it as driftwood and maybe plant some ficus thunbergii (better suited to terrariums) at the base for it to climb up.
Hopefully this helps, if you have any questions just ask 🙂