MAYDAY-Nepenthes in distress
Alexander Salomon (RS6111A@american.edu)
Tue, 10 Jan 95 22:22:03 EST
I recently had an accident with my large Nepenthes/Orchid case with a large
pane of glass breaking. I quickly transferred all of the Nepenthes and orchids
to my older tanks and repaired the glass by replacing it with a new pane-actual
-ly plexiglass this time around. I used Dow Corning Silicone sealant to glaze
the new piece in. I allowed the sealant to dry and later transferred the plants
back to the case. There was little loss of humidity as I made sure to jack up
the humidity level. 24 hours later, the plants were fine. 48 hours later, how-
ever, I noticed that on 4 of the plants, the leaves were becoming a light brown
to orange color-First from the outer parts and moving toward the center. It
was primarily older leaves that were affected. The pitchers on these leaves
appear to be fine. Is it the sealant vapors that has caused this problem?
Or are the plants suffering some kind of shock from the transfer. In any case,
I have removed all of the affected plants from the case. Of note is that no
Orchids(Paphs and Phals), no Sarracenia (I keep very few in the case anyway)
and several other Nepenthes remain unaffected. Does anyone have any ideas or
suggestions? I suspect it is the noxious vapors-does anyone have experience wit
h this problem? While there were several casualties, hopefully all will pull
through ok. any help is appreciated. -alex