philodendron plant care in vivarium

[ErinM31]

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Most of the plants seem to be doing well in my dart frog vivarium -- one aquatic Cryptocoryne wendtii, Pilea glauca 'Red Stem Tears', and several varieties of ferns and spikemoss. A few of the ferns got some brown around the leaf edges or brown leaves, but I believe they are recovering now that they are in a moist environment (my first water setup did not work and so I had to dig up and redo everything). However, I am concerned about this philodendron, mostly because I really like this plant and if it's not going to do well in the vivarium, I would rather take it out and grow it as a houseplant and give my froggies another large-leafed plant to sit in. According to Josh's Frogs, from where I bought it, it has heavy water needs, doesn't mind moist soil and has low to moderate light requirements so it SHOULD do just fine. The vivarium has only been set up two weeks now and in that time it looks neither better nor worse. Am I being impatient/overly-anxious?

Thank you for any advice, encouragement, or admonishments you can give!

 

[The Snark]

Sounds like you have everything covered. Some Phils are very slow growing. Like an inch a month and less in very low light conditions. And of course you have an initial wait for their roots to get (re)established. That could be a month or two.

Be happy if you have a slow grower. Excellent for vivariums. What you don't want is one of the rocketbutt varieties where you give it a miss for a week and it's unscrewed the vivarium lid and is climbing out the living room window.

BTW, they like some bark to climb. Philo, love of, dendron, tree. Tree huggers.

 

[ErinM31]

Sounds like you have everything covered. Some Phils are very slow growing. Like an inch a month and less in very low light conditions. And of course you have an initial wait for their roots to get (re)established. That could be a month or two.

Thank you so much for the info! My poor plant has indeed been moved around several times in the past weeks so it especially makes sense that it would need to get its roots established before growing more foliage, and it probably will be slow with the low light, but as you point out, that is not a bad thing.

So long as it's healthy or at least on its way to becoming so!

Thank you again!

 

[The Snark]

OH! Trivia! Remembered something from a century or two ago. Easy on feeding them nitrogen. They are sort of epiphyte a bit and super rich soil gives them anxiety attacks. So does direct sunlight. (Leaf burn).