FlyTrapCare Forums

Hi Everyone,
Just joined as already you've been helpful. Was wondering why my drosera capensis wouldn't curl and found the answer while googling. Thank you all very much.
Have tried keeping venus fly traps in the past without much success but am determined to keep this little sundew alive. Plenty of fungus gnats around here generally so it should be well fed.
No ability to harvest rainwater so am feeding it diluted aquarium water, here's hoping that will do the trick.
Anyway, off to search the forums.
Have a great one.

Welcome! But in less you're one of the lucky few with naturally low tds (total dissolved solids) tap water, diluted aquarium water is likely to kill your plants. You need water with 0 tds - or at least under 50 tds. If you can't collect rain water, look at ZeroWater filters (no other brand) to do the job for you. http://www.zerowater.com

What evenwind said ^^^. Seriously.

Aquarium water is going to have nitrogen in it from fish excrement, decomposed foods and plants, etc.,...plus whatever minerals were in the original water.

The zerowater filters are good or you can buy gallons of distilled water (TDS=0-10 ppm...usually 0 ppm) for around $1.25 a gallon...for a couple of plants a gallon will last a long time. Also, RO (reverse osmosis) bottled drinking water (TDS =<25 ppm) usually has low enough TDS to work ok.

Welcome to the forum!

Welcome to the forum.

TDS = total dissolved solids? Ok, will stop using the aquarium water, it’s an Amazonian biotope so lots of leaf litter which will increase the varying compounds in the water. Bottled water for the moment then. We do have very soft water here, around 2, so perhaps filtering that will make it ok. Will do a little research around TDS.

Thanks

Just saw you clarified TDS in your earlier post… speed reading lol.

If you're going to be working with carnivorous plants you might want to invest $15 for a TDS meter. This is the one that I have and it works well: "TDS Meter".

Remember that not just any bottled water will work. Some bottled drinking water is too mineralized for CPs. Your tap water might actually be ok to use, but without a TDS meter it's hard to know. Also, chlorines and chloramines aren't good either....a pitcher filter could help that. But, for a few plants, buying distilled water by the gallon jug is a simple solution. Once your collection grows, though, it could get expensive.

Does your cape have lots of glistening dew drops on it? What did you find by googling that explained why your cape wasn't curling around insects?