Paph. anitum flasklings update.

Still alive  and growing but leaves are coming out too narrow. I wonder why?

Paph. anitum seedlings update

After reading few statements about growing anitums from flasks I realized that I need to repot them. During last potting I used pre-mixed growing medium from Ravenvision and noticed that it retains too much moisture for too long, especially in the 80% humidity of the tank. Now I used my usual mix of small fir bark and perlite but without adding sphagnum moss.
Also instead of putting them all into one shallow tray I created three compots with 5 plants each as recommended by experienced growers. Here they are.
compot 1



compot 2



compot 3



In the first compot I noticed starts of new leaves:



but their growth will probably be stalled for a while now because of all the repotting stress.
Now there are 15 seedlings instead of 16, I accidentally ripped one apart trying to remove brown bottom leaf...

Paphiopedilum anitum flask update

After two months all anitums are still alive. They did loose some bottom leaves and have some damage from the unfortunate crash of phalaenopsis onto them.







It is hard to say if there was any growth, probably no...

Anitum disaster

Here is another confirmation of the rule "the less you fuss with orchids - the better they grow". I was so worried about anitum flask: if it gets too much light, if there is not enough air flow, if it started to rot from the bottom as everyone suggested they would. So I kept checking and checking on them until my clumsiness played evil and dropped whole big phalaenopsis plant right on the tray with poor anitums.
Needless to say there is a lot of damage - broken top on one, lots of broken and bent leaves on others, tray jumbled up, so I had to literally repot them.
As it always happens, the biggest and best were affected the most.
Here they are after disaster:





Not sure about survival now and feel quite down: instead of giving them good start I managed to make sure they get a huge setback. If I could I would go and get another flask to do everything right from the start, but unfortunately have no such luxury, only maybe next year. Darn it...

Deflasked Paph. anitum

Plantlets in anitum flask were overgrown, so I decided to deflask right away. The actual name of cross is Paph. anitum x sib ('特優' x '#100-1') and it came from Ching Hua Orchids.

Puck swimming in a bowl:



I liked how soft agar was, no problems washing it off. Plantlets separated relatively easy, but couple pairs didn't want to untangle -I left them as is. Counted 16 plants, not 20 as advertised:



Brown leaves at the bottom didn't look healthy so I peeled them off. Leaves are long and tangled, hope they will straighten up. Potted:



I created natural shade from large phalaenopsis in the corner of small tank. Anitum lives there now: