FlyTrapCare Forums

Hello all, I know I been making some posts regarding my current vfts and thank you everyone for the help! But i just I need some answers, attached you will see my previous b52 vfts I had purchased from PP, they look VERY healthy and for about 5 months they thrived, beautiful traps and big size, then one day, i check up on the. And every single trap is closed and sealed, my plants were kept indoors and i will admit, did not probably have the correct throw light on them, but they seemed to be doing well! Growing big and growing fast, but anyways, the traps were all sealed, with nothing in them, then they would start to open back up, and then close and seal again, this went on till the leaves died off from opening and closing, i also noticed at the same time, littke clear worms crawling around on the LFSM, and in the water tray little microscopic bouncing brown bugs, i would dump the try and they came back every time, I tried insecticide safe for cps and it only made it worse, this went on till the plants new growth started to have brown spots and brown on exsiting leaves, i only ever let it sit in a 1/2 inch to a inch of water, and gave it 12+ houes of light a day, does anyone maybe have a andwer as to what might have happened? Was it pests? Was it lack of light? What were the little bugs and did they hurt it? I just wanna know what had happened and what to look out for in the future to prevent this because it’s a shame they were really beautiful flytraps, below you will see what they looked like when they started to die and stay closed, I tried to contact PP aboht it and they never gave me a clear answer,

Maybe the bugs just kept closing the traps and escaping, so the trap died because the traps closing so much drained its energy

I'm not sure why the traps kept closing. Something had to be triggering them, perhaps some sort of vibration or a child. That sized pot constantly in 1/2 inch of water would be too much. Also, at 5 months, the plant could have been going dormant. If you kept it in that much water, it likely rotted.

Okay so how much water would you recommend that size pot be in for future reference? And I thought that maybe wS a answr but it was only august so why was it going dormant? I thought maybe the bugs were triggering them but is there a way to prevent whatever those little bugs were? I had a smaller flytrap at that time that was actually catching. The little critters too

If your growing media is LFSM i would not use a trey at all just let it free drain. I use peat/perlite for my flytraps with tall pots in treys.

Oh okay, wll I use the tray because it is a lottt easier then trying to tell when I neee to warwr them again since I have 3 pots in the trayonly one of those pots however has lfsm, is there any way i could get away with still using the tray without harming my plant?

Normally wbat I do is i fill it with a little less then half a inch of water, then once the tray dries refill it to the same amount, then the cycle repeats itself

For indoor traps, they don’t need to be sitting in water 24/7. When I tray water indoor vft, I let the tray go dry and water again when the pots feel light when picked up. About once a week. It sounds like you had a lot of fungus gnat larvae in your pots. They wouldn’t hurt a vft that size. What kind of light is that in the photos? Is it a tube light? Your flytrap probably died because it was too wet without proper lighting.

LFSM is like a sponge, it just gets water logged and stays sloppy wet sitting in water. I use it for a lot of in door plants but i use plastic jar lids under the pots so water can drain out and not get wicked back into the media.

That’s a good idea, I’ll do that tosay when I get homefor my vfts!

Also vftnpups yes it was a tube light, I have learned form that and am currently using a SANSI 36w grow bulb for them at about 3-5 inches away for better intensity, well actually 2 od them because I live in an apartment

Also so with the plastic lids can I use the tray method then? Or just top water every couple day and let it drain out

Take into account I only keep flytraps outside. My sundews do great indoors in peat/perlite in water treys. I would never keep LFSM in a water treys unless its a short term thing like going out of town.

3.5in pots I sell for $5 locally, like every 2 weeks i fill the water trey to about 1.5inches

So I put my vft in the LFSM on a cap like Optique showed, and I’ll be top watering that one from now on as well, the one in the square pot is my most recent purchase, when it came it had like 2 traps on the main plant starting to grow though, the other 2 in the orange pots are Lowe’s rescues I seen on the shelf a couple weeks ago, they seemed fresh since they were both flowering whenci got them but hopefully they do well! I just got another SANSI bulb so I’ll be able to more evenly provide the light for all 3,

So I came home today and checked on my flytraps and I seen one of the new traps that was jsut avoht to open waa startign to turn blackis this because of the light burning it? Or something else, it kinda had a yellowish color to it too, seems to only be that leaf though, that was one of the ones that was growing when I repotted it out fi the miracle gro