u/realjeremyantman

I have had a few flexuosums since 2023, but they seem to be slow to learn new things. Last summer they started blooming the first time, but I didn't get a single pepper. This summer I'm getting a lot of berries, but there are no seeds at all. Good for eating, bad for propagation. Maybe the next summer I'll get seeds too, although I've been able to get some cuttings to root.

The berries taste very hot and quite sweet. It's also interesting that the berries are juicy like tomatoes and they are full of the pulp. There is no hollow part inside at all. I think these would make an excellent hot sauce.

Dryadella aviceps is flowering in my terrarium

We tried to grow ferric hexakis urea chloride crystals with my colleague, but didn't get anything out of the solution so we put it into the fridge and forgot it there. Two months later I found this and a crystallized mass on the bottom of the beaker. It's not as smooth as we hoped for, but at least something crystallized. The crystals look blue in the solution, but yellow in the air.

I grew this crystal from a solution that had equimolar amounts of ferrous sulfate and sodium sulfate. Not sure if there's actually sodium sulfate in the crystal, but I'm quite certain that the solution was saturated with both of the salts. There was also some sulfuric acid to prevent iron precipitation.

At least the crystal is very beautiful!

I grew this crystal in the lab fridge with my colleague. We dissolved citric acid in ferric sulfate solution and added some sodium hydroxide. Then we left the solution in the fridge for a month and yesterday we found some cool crystals in the beaker. I think they are mostly citric acid, but there's certainly some iron component too. I washed this crystal and the yellow color still stayed.

The crystal is really brittle - the pinchers made it crack a bit. Also, it doesn't like air. It was on the table for ten minutes and it already started to turn white and dry. We quickly put it into an airtight container so hopefully it stays good.

I grew this huge magnesium sulfate crystal in my work laboratory fridge. Took about two weeks to get it to this size. I think it's the best crystal I have ever grown

I built a terrarium for orchids and some other plants out of a used aquarium. There's a small stream that ends in a little pond and the cleaning crew consist of isopods and springtails. It's still missing a little fan to get the air moving a bit more, but I don't know where to get one.

There are following plants in the terrarium (from about left to right):

- Tillandsia araujei

- Schoenorchis tixieri

- Nepenthes sp.

- Selaginella apoda

-Salvinia minima(?)

- Dryadella aviceps

- Tillandsia sp.

- Fittonia sp.

- Bulbophyllum lasiochilum

- Pleurothallis palliolata I'm trying to save

- Some random fern that came in an orchid's pot

- Another Fittonia sp.

- Bulbophyllum bolsteri

- Tillandsia albertiana

- Another Nepenthes sp.

There are also some random mosses I gathered from the outside, although it seems that my isopods are eating them. At least they leave the other plants alone then.