mixing lighting and plants

[Anonymous]

with vivariums being basicly small how do most of you go about getting enough light to the plants that need lots of it with out killing the indirect sunlight plants like the moss ect or the other way around.

[Zurp]

Most high light plants grow taller, and will shade your lower growing plants. Mosses take a long time to kill and grow, the high light plants usually grow faster, and will shade the mosses before they get a chance to die.

I have actually made a plexiglass cutout, which I then frosted with my sandblaster, to resemble leaves from tall trees above. This casts a shadowed light where my moss only plants are. I also selected mosses which were growing in direct sunlight, so I know that the plants are sun tolerant, or that they grow faster than they die in the full sun.

If you choose a nice medium, then your higher demand plants will grow slightly stunted, and your low light plants may just thin out... I don't think that you will kill off all of your plants. (Moss, I have found out, is more sensitive to soil conditions than it is to light variation. Some can live for years in improper setups, then just die suddenly.)