I'm assuming you mean panels, not 'board'. Black Jungle has it, but it's very expensive. However, since it lasts way longer than cocopanels, it is cheaper in the long run. Go to www.blackjungle.com.

I got mine from cloudjungle, but they appear to be out of stock right now except for 6"x6". They'll probably have some in soon, but you might shoot them an email to make sure.

Here is a link that might be useful: cloudjungle

Oh my goodness, get it at Cloud Jungle! WAY cheaper than Black Jungle! What an awesome company, thank you so much for posting that link, eukaryote! I can't believe the prices! I MUST order from them when I'm in the States this Christmas!

I'd just like to point out that by buying fern root (usually made from Dicksonia antarctica) you are helping destroy Tasmania's wilderness.

If you can be sure that the root is made from a fast growing tree fern, then plunge in, but the majority are from plants that take hundreds of years to grow - cut using clearfelling techniques or even just going into national parks with a chainsaw. :-(

Good point, Nathan! Just as sphagnum moss is being over-harvested in a non-sustainable way, so are other natural products. Coir (coconut fibre) is sustainable, and its use should be encouraged.

Yep, Coir is a brilliant material for terrariums! One minor point about Coir - Coir is very high in potassium and sodium. It might be a good idea to wash the Coir before using it (just leave it in a bucket of water and drain the water I guess?). The potassium might be inside the fibres though, in which case it could be a good fertilizer as it breaks down.

Is there any good way to make Coir stay stuck together, rather than just a 'soil'? When you buy it here it comes in bricks, but these bricks expand when they get wet, and fall apart.

Here is a link that might be useful: A bit on coir

I use coir as a substrate in my terrarium and I am very happy with it. The surface is now almost fully covered in moss and I have not had any fungal problems etc. I did make sure to soak and drain the coir for several days before I used it and there is a drainage layer of about 6" of expanded clay beads below the coir layer.

Perhaps you could mix the coir or Coconut husk chips in with the concrete bonder and make forms for mounting plants etc. I made walls useing Greatstuff foam and coated them with a layer of black silicone and the coir and it has performed well but does not hold a lot of water.

Hey, that link was from the Alberta government! I live in Alberta! Did you do that on purpose? I believe that the only way to make it stay together is to use lots of silicone when sticking it to your terrarium walls. You can use the bricks for the bottom, and then you get panels (about 1" thick) for the walls. If you don't apply the silicone LIBERALLY, your walls will completely collapse in a couple years because of the weight of the water and plants, and because it just degrades until the silicone is the only thing holding it together. That's why I don't plan on using a lot of it when I make my huge viv. Who wants to re-do their terr. every few years? Plus, you'd have to try to remove the old coir from the roots of all the plants that had grown into it (to some extent), and that might damage your plants. I think that using the expanding foam (Great Stuff) and covering it with a peat/coir/concrete bonder is a better, longer-lasting option. I believe that Persistence did that as well, and so far it's been doing well for him.

You can buy compressed CoCo Panels from Vivaria Projects (a Netherlands company), and some other places that resell from them here in the states. I'll see if I can track down those people here in the states. These are supposed to be long-lasting panels that are ideal for mounting epiphytes.

Black Jungle sells the coco panels as well, but they aren't the cheapest things. Another product you might want to try is the capillary matting used by greenhouses to keep large areas of seedling flats evenly moist. I have used it for growing seedlings and plants, and it's great! I noticed that if left for too long, the plant's roots would grow directly into the matting. They attach themselves very well. One could use this matting for the back of a terrarium, or for covering fake branches. It is dark grey in colour, and though thin, it will hold together for years and years, if not forever, and the plants will anchor themselves well. I'm not sure how well orchids or other epis with thicker roots would anchor themselves, but one could mount terrestrials epiphytically this way for sure. See the link below.

Here is a link that might be useful: Lee Valley

sahoyaref: that looks brilliant! I'm going to try and track some down this week (I need to keep myself distracted - getting married in just over a fortnight :) I think if I cut it into strips I could lay it over some pre-cut styrene foam rockface and glue with say liquid nails. Will it grow moss do you think?

In my greenhouse I've got a piece of fern block that was sitting in the fish bath - someone was throwing it out a few years back and I hoarded it :). It's grown an impressive bunch of ferns and mosses and I'll like to try for a full height fern wall at the back of the bath to the bench using something like this capillary stuff.

I'm sure that the matting would grow moss quite easily! It stays perfeclty evenly moist when laid horizontally, and I imagine it would perform well enough vertically and on slants as well. Of course the underside would be wetter, but who cares? That happens in nature anyways. If you want a wall, you will need to keep it watered much like a rain wall, as it just won't be able to suck up all the water it will need. But that's easy to set up.

Congrats on the upcoming wedding! I've been married for two years and I love it! And your fiance must be wonderful for putting up with your plant obsession. =) My husband sure is. . . =)

Ok, {{gwi:1271183}} Now to work out how to use it. It looks remarkably like carpet underlay - I wonder if I could get it cheaper from a carpet shop (I guess I need to make sure it's purely acrylic - otherwise it will smell like wet dog in a few days :)

Lynne is just as obsessive - we make a great (dangerous?) couple!

Weird! Mine is just plain grey. Yours looks like it's been made from some recycled materials, which is great, because recycling is always a good thing! I doubt carpet underlay is the same thing. Capillary matting is likely put together in some special way that makes it wick water so well. It's not just any old piece of fabric. Have fun figuring out what to do with it! =) With that many colours in it, I'd want to cover it up with some creeping plants like ficus pumila ASAP. =)

Doing some experimenting I've found that the way to encourage moss is to form a substrate of bacteria on the surface. The standard approach is to use sour milk, but I noticed that plants I had treated with dipel (a biotoxin for cutworms and loopers) had lots of moss coming up in the pot.

I'm now trying to think of a reasonable clean, non-smelly source of bacteria to soak into the cap-mat. Seaweed fertilizer might work, but it's still a little pongy. I have no idea if the kind of bac. matters, or whether I could short circuit the process using straight ground-up moss.

Alternatively, maybe it could be just covered with coir glued on with something waterproof but that allows water through. Spray adhesive perhaps?