So you went ahead and ordered one anyway. I have a few different Jewel Alocasias though not this one. I think you'll be pleased with it.

Thanks, tropic. Thought I'd try the aroid forum, since there might be more people who grown them here. Yep, the seedling heat mat and plant are on their way. I'll post a pic when I get it. Are you in FL? Seems most successful aroid growers are, lol!

Some years ago Lari Ann Garner of Aroidia Research did an article on
growing Jewel Alocasia, it was the Daves Garden site. If you do a search
you'll find it very helpful. I'm in Australia, in the north west which
is an equatorial tropical climate. I like aroids and have a lot of
different ones. This is one of my Jewel Alocasias, A. reginula.

That is just beautiful, tropic! I love the look of the jewel alocasias. They have quite the personality! I got my litle 'Kapit' yesterday and have it in a 20 gallon aquarium. The aquarium was turned upside down, but I found it very difficult and cumbersome to get to the plant, pebble tray, etc., so I turned it right side up. What do you suggest I put over the top of it to keep the humidity in? So much easier to access the plant with the top open, but I know it won't hold the heat and humidity in as much as if I'd left it upside down. Here's a pic of my new baby. I tied up the leaves (a little wilted from 5 days in the mail) with soft wire.

Oh, I'm very careful so that my pebble trays don't allow any water to touch the bottom of the pot. Good! I'm glad I can have the aquarium upright. I have a board on it currently, with an inch of space for some air to get in. I'm afraid it won't get enough light now though. I do have a hydrometer/thermometer combo in my fiddler crab enclosure, so I'll probably order another of the same type. My humidity, in no way, gets even CLOSE to 80% at night! It stays low pretty much all of the time. Since it's all by itself in that big ole' tank, I was thinking of putting some hoya cuttings I'll be getting shortly in there too, since they could use the humidity until they root. Should I repot the alocasia come spring? It's in a 2.5" pot.

A sheet of glass or clear perspex would be better to put over the top. Humidity will still be higher in the aquarium than in the room. But you'll only know for definite if you get the meter (I assume you meant hygrometer, a hydrometer measures water, or fluid, density). Once you know what you're dealing with you can then make adjustments. I put Hoya cuttings in ziplock bags with a bit of water and that works quite well. If they've got the humidity they'll sprout roots all over. When repotting put the Alocasia in a wider shallow pot. That'll give you (your plant) more head height.

Unfortunately I don't have glass or perspex for the top. I would have to go buy some at Home Depot or Lowe's. I have been checking, and the humidity was at 25% earlier, and now (evening) it's still only 30%! I told you it's dry here, lol! The meter is on the way, and I'm using the crab meter until it gets here. And yes, I meant hygrometer. Maybe I'll put the hoya cuttings in ziplock bags, since it has worked well for you, tropic. Those wide, shallow pots are expensive! I couldn't believe it! The azalea pots go for $14 and up in the stores and on ebay too. I love them because they don't tip over nearly as easily. Why are pots so expensive these days? Didn't used to be. Thank you for all your help. It's not droopy (although the soft wire is holding it up) and the leaves are nice and firm. I can't see how it likes that low humidity though. It has the heat pad and pebble tray, and it stays around 75F in there. I'm doing all I can . . .

The reason for suggesting the shallow pot was that the plant doesn't need much depth for the roots and a low pot will leave more head room for it.

If the heat pad is below the pebble tray you'd expect humidity to be higher than 25 - 30%. With temperature higher in the tank than the room then the warm air would rise taking humidity with it and be replaced by cooler drier air.

Adding some moss-like plants, Selaginella or small ferns should hold more humidity in the aquarium. The temperature (converts to about 24C) is pretty good. When your summer comes it may go up along with the ambient temperature.

With the Hoya cuttings in ziplock bags, I wash them with fresh water every 2 - 3 days. Tip the water in the bag, slosh it around and then tip it out. This changes the air and the water preventing it from going mouldy or stagnant.

Yes, I did understand about having a lower pot, but this is a 20 gallon high aquarium. It's 17" high, higher than your average 20 gallon. So far, plenty of head room. I just hate having pots tip over, and with the short, fat pots, it's much less likely to happen.

I have a seedling heat mat under the pebble tray, and was shocked to see that it doesn't raise the humidity much at all. I still mist twice a day, but that only gets it up to 30%. The highest it's been (just after misting) is almost 35%. Maybe the heat mat doesn't get hot enough? But one day it got up to 75 degrees in the room in the afternoon, and I laid a thermometer on the mat, and it was nearly 90 degreesF! So I'll have to really watch it when the weather warms up in spring. Talk about a fine line...

So I have quite the dilemma. The plant is not declining, and I'm trying to stay hopeful that it will adjust. I will put my pteris fern in there as well. That's about all I have room for at this point, because I also put an anthurium in there. Maybe I'll grab a maidenhair at Lowe's and see if that will fit in there too.

I will certainly wash the hoya cuttings too, as you suggested! I'm excited to see how they do for me. Here is a pic of the alocasia that I took yesterday.

Check the pebble tray water temperature if you have an aquarium thermometer. The high temperature of the heat mat might explain the low humidity in the tank. If the mat is 90F (32C) and the room temp is 75F (24C) then the hotter air will rise very rapidly and be replaced by room air which will be dry. The room temp is okay for the plant so maybe you should try switching the heat pad off and then monitor temp and humidity.

That baro-, thermo-, hygro-meter set up does look like overkill. Gardeners are always resourceful if nothing else. At least you know what's going on in the tank while you're waiting for the hygrometer. Meantime you can even get a weather forecast for inside the tank, LOL.

It looks like rain in the tank...oh my.

I'll try turning off the heat mat. This is driving me coo-coo! It looks like rain in the tank because I had just misted, lol.

That should work out better. The warm air is rising up from the middle of the tank while the cooler dry replacement air is coming in over the sides and over the weather station. So the weather station is giving you a reading for the replacement air. Once the temperature between tank and room is more even the heavier humid air should hang in the tank more.

I think you're worrying too much. I have an alocasia portora that I got as a tiny plant in a 1 1/2 (yes really) pot last spring. It's now 2 1/2 foot high, and grew slowly all winter in an arid (due to heating) cool laundry room (60-50F)..and it never even went dormant. Obviously not an ideal situation, but the plant has sent out two new leaves since Dec 1st.

I half expected it to go dormant or at least stop growing and look pretty pathetic, but it's quite vigorous and happy looking.

That gives me hope, dbarron! Well, I turned off the heat mat yesterday (24 hours ago) and the humidity in there is 17%, and I even misted twice today. So apparently the heat mat wasn't the problem. With the humidity THAT low anyway, I opted to put it on a very large pebble tray along with several other plants, thinking it might be happier there. Was I wrong to move it? I hear plants don't like that.

I'm surprised the humidity went the other way. I wonder what the humidity is in the room. More plants in there will bring up humidity with all the extra transpiration.

It's important to not base care of your plant on Alocasia 'Portora' as it was developed by Aroidia Research to be very cold tolerant. LariAnn Garner did a lot of hybridisation work to produce Alocasias that would survive in colder climates. Alocasia 'Portora' was one of her big successes.

Ah...well that explains that ;)

I'm still waiting on a hygrometer. I had to contact the company (Weather Station) when I didn't get it. They emailed me back saying they MIGHT get it back in stock on March 14. Nice of them, huh? They should have given me a heads-up, as I've been waiting, and should have gotten it about six days ago! I vented, and told them that was not good business--that they should have let me know it wasn't in stock, and that they didn't know if they'd be getting them in or not. I mentioned that I could have ordered from someone else, and already had it by now. So I ordered from another company, and they say by the 6th of March I should have it. I am very curious to know the humidity in the room too! I suspect it's not too much lower than the humidity in the aquarium! I left the fern in there, by the way.

A lot of companies are doing that now. They don't like to be holding stock and paying for something that hasn't already been paid for by a customer. When they get an order they put in their order and meanwhile your money reduces their bank over draft.

They sent me an email last night and refunded my money back to Paypal. Apologized, said they did the wrong thing by not informing me, that they usually do, but it was an oversight. Whatever. My new one was shipped out today.

I have the new hygrometer. I love it. So small, and easy to read too. Right after I misted thoroughly, it read 60%. Within a half an hour, it was back down to 40%! Just now looked at it (it's dusk now) and it's at 55%. So you're right, tropic, about humidity going up at night. I'll see what it is again in a couple of hours. What's so funny is, with the big pebble tray and a group of plants together, it's more humid than it was in an aquarium!

Let it stabilise over a day or two and then see how it ranges. As I mentioned earlier, plants give off water so clumped together they affect the local humidity. That's how the Amazon works, the vast amount of trees and other plants giving off the water cause the rainforest environment. If you fill your room with plants humidity will go right up.