At whits end...

[calivivarium]

Okay, so i have had my vivarium set up for approximatly 7 months, and it has recently taken a nose dive. I will describe my tank and then my problem(s) I tried to take some pics, but unfortunately my camera's batteries were dead so here are my tank stats:

20gal tall glass tank w/ screen top 3/4 covered by glass

2 20watt 6500k cfl bulbs on for 12hrs a day

Eco-Earth/foam background w/ several pieces of wood

java moss, unk orchid, poss psuedobulbophylum(sp?) orchid, unk tropical vine on life support, "dragonscale fern," moneywort, lucky bamboo, and java fern(in the water). I am using a liquid fertilizer 1x a week (above water, 2x below)

I have approx 3gal water on bottom kept @ 78f with a pump @ approx 40gph

My problem is that approx 3 months ago I was running only a single 27watt cfl daylight bulb and my moss started to brown at the tips and the rest of my plants had slow growth. I was told that I need more light, so I replaced the 27watt cfl with dual 20watt 6500k bulbs. Since then, I have had most of my moss brown at tips/turn yellow, the "dragonscale fern" has had its new growth completely stop, orchid has begun turning yellow/dying, and I have a killer time keeping moss moist. Also, the nasty black algae/slime has begun to take over my moss...

What the heck am I doing wrong? Is it too much light? The wrong kind of light? The yellowing.. is that from too much moisture or too much light? I know this is probably light on the info, but let me know if there is any other info I can give you to help out. I unfortunately did not set this thing up myself, I bought it from someone else who said all the plants would work together nicely and I would simply have to mist the thing once a day....

[Jason]

Could be nutrient sucking algee...Do you use filtered / RO water or straight from the tap? tap water is always changeing form one concentration of mineral to another, to much one month and less in another. Have you added anything new to the tank like rocks found outdoors? or anything at all. An increase in heat and mosture can also lead to this problem. personally i would suspect the lights seeing this change came after the change... tear it down, clean it up and scrub it hard. but i hope somebody with much more Xp then myself can pop in here and help before that...better safe then sorry

[calivivarium]

I use tap water filtered through peat moss/aged for the water portion of my tank. I mist with distilled water. I have not added to the tank other than the light at that one point. I was hoping I would not have to do a tear down (after waiting all this time for my tank to settle in, my frogs that I ordered a while ago are now due in two weeks). Should I scrub this thing with anything specific? I would like to at least NOT tear down my water plants(those seem to be adjusting fine to the light)

[Jason]

You could just remove the infected portions of the plants and moss and make sure the tank is well vented, My own personal problem if this was my tank is the leaching of the " algee" or " fungus" into the water system recirculating itself via a waterfall or mist/rain system. 2 weeks should be enough time to see if the browning returns. When it comes to scubing down a tank its hard find a suitable cleaning product when the tank is full, I use white Vininger to clean my tanks i suppose you could do the same just watch it dosent get into places it shouldnt

[Green Ghost]

calivivarium: I read your original post and was thinking changing something like the placing of the terrarium would definitely affect the lighting conditions for the plants. I wanted to ask... did the person who owned the viv before you bought it have it in a window? If so do you know what direction the window was? (north, south, etc...) But then again if you've had it for 7 months already then that question might not be important. Edges of leaves on plants turning brown is usually due to something being wrong with the roots. I thought it might be not enough moisture from your description but then you said you had some slime on your moss which sounds like too much moisture....

Pics would help but I'm thinking you probably have tropical moss in there? If your moss is drying out it's not as bad as if it gets too soggy. Dried moss will revive when moister conditions return. When my moss has turned to slime it never came back and looked rotten/dead. To keep moss green and healthy it needs shaded light with periods of high moisture then periods of drying. IMHO just because some plants die, doesn't justify tearing down the whole tank.

Was the original browing of the tips (of the moss) due to drying?

As a side note, to answer your question above, it's almost impossible to have too much light.

Edit: if I understood correctly you were using a single 27 watt compact fluorescent bulb? Then you switched to two 20 watt compact fluorescent bulbs?

Could it be that the combined heat of both 20w cfl are drying the tank too much? I'm inclined to think so because the orchid is also suffering.

Last thing, I would stop the fertilizer for awhile.

Hope that helped.

[calivivarium]

Thanks again for the info... by combining what you have given me with some more reading I have been doing, I think I have to make one of two choices(well, three if I leave tearing it all down on the table).

1) Maintain current lighting but restructure the equiptment. I could move the glass again where I had it originally(and plants were doing better), place lights on some small objects to elevate slightly and install a fan on top to blow away excess heat. Then I could add a small fan inside as well. I could even take one of my 20watt and reduce to a 13watt.

2)Switch over to running two 15w 24" t8 bulbs in a hood I have seen for sale decently priced. This would change the lighting scheme, but perhaps I could go this route and create a more "lush" look to the tank? I could possibly only use one fan inside the enclosure instead of trying to mount two with plan #1.

I will refrain from ferts, I have cut down lighting a bit, and am going to begin tearing out the slime over the next few days. If you guys wish, I can take a pic then if you would like.

To answer Green Ghosts questions, the tank was not near a window before I bought it. It was actually only set up for about 3-4 weeks prior to it being purchased by me. The mosses are Java moss, correct. The brown tips occurred before I swapped the lighting. Now that I have compared what was happening then to what is happening now, I think the brown tips occur shortly before the slime takes over... so whatever is causing the slime (excess heat/moisture/lack of air movement) is probably causing the browning, right? My temps are about 81-83f at the top of my tank now as opposed to before when they were closer to 76f.

this pic is a bit old, I have since cleaned up the money wort it actually looks good now and probably everything else is looking worse, lol

thanks again for the help so far guys

edit: ps, any idea what that vine in the left foreground is?(its dead now RIP) If it could actually grow in my tank I want it again. I am just bummedright now when I think about how far downhill my tank has gone...