The ultimate terrarium guide

If you want to learn how to make a terrarium then this is the video for you. I'll guide you through every step explaining in detail as I go along and I'll tell you the best way to care for your terrarium ensuring the highest chance of success. Before we get started here are the three most important things you can do to ensure the health and longevity of your terrarium. Number one, use the right soil. Number two, do not overwater your terrarium. And number three, make sure that it gets adequate light. Get these three things right and your chances of success will vastly increase. I'll go into more detail in the care section. Here are the materials you're going to need. A glass container, you can use any you like just make sure it's transparent and has a lid of some kind. I'm using a fishbowl with a 25 centimeter diameter and a clear acrylic lid. Some small grain gravel for drainage. I dislike using larger grains because it doesn't look right. Small grains are 100% better. A water bottle filled with filtered water. Terrarium soil, it's important to get this right. I won't go into depth here but check out this video where I do. Plants, here's what I'm using. Start by adding a few centimeters of the small grain gravel into the container. This will act as drainage. Next the soil goes in. I like to arrange the soil on a gradient with it being lower at the front and higher at the back. This allows for more surface area to be visible from the front and adds a sense of scale to the terrarium. At this point I always lightly water the soil. This helps it stay in place when I'm adding the plants. Now it's time for the plants. As a general rule, larger plants go at the back and smaller ones at the front. Once it's finished I give it a final light spray and cover it with its lid. Ongoing care. The terrarium is going to need to be positioned somewhere bright. The easiest way to do this is to use artificial light and I do this by using a regular lamp with a warm white LED bulb in it. The bulbs I use are standard E27 bulbs and they fit into most lamps. To remove any ambiguity about light your terrarium is going to need a minimum of 100 foot candles. This is a general rule and differs with different plants. Now this may sound a bit alien to you but you can download a free light meter app on your phone and what it will do it will tell you the exact amount of light a certain area is getting. It's really that simple. There's a free app on Android called the HPJ light meter app and you need a You must never water to a schedule or a calendar and by this I mean do not water once a week, once every two weeks or once a month. Your terrarium needs watering when it needs watering. You can tell when it needs watering by observing the soil or by sticking your finger inside of it to test how moist it is. The soil should be just moist, certainly not wet and not dry. The soil will change to a lighter colour when it starts to dry and it will be darker when it's moist. You will only want to water when it starts to dry and always water slowly with the spray bottle on the mist setting. Over watering is difficult to rectify. I've had some terrariums for well over a year that haven't been watered. If your terrarium has a lid it will benefit the plants inside if you remove it from time to time to allow fresh air in. So my thinking behind this is that most terrarium plants come from parts of the world where it's extremely humid. These plants also have access to an infinite amount of air. The terrarium will provide the humidity but it does not provide that air and by removing the lid from time to time just freshens the inside up. I do this with all of my terrariums and while it's not a perfect solution it has definitely benefited them. If you got value from this video consider hitting subscribe. I upload new videos every single Thursday and if you'd like to continue the discussion you can email me or DM me on social media and I would also like to personally invite you to my beginner friendly Facebook discussion group. It's called Terrarium Group and all the links are in the description below. Thank you very much for watching and I'll see you in the next video.