FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

First of all I would like to say hello to everyone here and I have very little experience in keeping carniverous plants (alive).

I recently ordered three venus flytraps from http://bugbitingplants.com/intelligent_plant_light.php; a regular, dente, and royal red. I bought a nifty little grow light with them (9 watt) and I am waiting for everything to come in the mail.

If they last a while then I would like to move them into a terrarium, probably a 10-30 gallon fishtank with a screen top and better lighting system.
I read that venus flytraps are not well suited for terrariums because they don't get enough light and because of mildew accumulating in the terrarium. Unfortunately my current housing situation prevents me from growing them outside. Which is very unfortunate because im in Florida.

With that being said, I would like to post photographes of the terrariums progress when/if I start. If you could give me advice and negative/positive criticism that would be great.

Hello and welcome to flytrapcare!

You're in Florida huh? Why do you want to move them into a terrarium? Just grow them under your light or in a windowsill. Though, to survive long term, they're going to need a dormancy. Do you have any way to provide that? I'd imagine that may be tough to do in Florida. You might have to use the fridge method.

I would have to use the fridge method. When doing this do you still need to keep light on the plants? What happens if you keep them the same temperature around the year and not simulate a dormancy period?

The Mighty Thor wrote:I would have to use the fridge method. When doing this do you still need to keep light on the plants?

If you can give them light during dormancy, they'll be healthier plants in the spring. But how would you keep lights on them in the fridge?

The Mighty Thor wrote:What happens if you keep them the same temperature around the year and not simulate a dormancy period?

Temperature isn't as important as shortening days. The shorter days signal the plants to go into dormancy. The lower temperatures help too, but the predominant driving force is shorter days. Surely the days get shorter in Florida during the winter. Also, I'm sure it cools down a bit there too. Once you're in the middle of November or early December, you could probably place them in the fridge for a couple of months to help them get a deeper dormancy.

Though, it may be that you can just grow your plants outside all year long and they'll do fine.

I'm not sure how much of a change in daylight hours VFTs need to trigger dormancy, but depending on the location in Florida there may not be enough change. Where VFTs grow naturally it looks like they approximately have a 4hr maximum change in the amount of daylight from summer to winter. Northern Florida experiences a change of about 3 hours max and southern Florida (Miami) only experiences a 2hr maximum difference between summer and winter. Like I said before, I'm not sure what the VFT needs to trigger dormancy though...anyone?

I thought I would share this:

Thank you all for the information. Im in northern Florida so it isnt too far off of what they would normally get. At first I thought that venus flytraps were hard to keep alive but it sounds like all of the ones I had before died because of the humidity lids. Im a little dissapointed because I wanted to make a terrarium lol. Oh well it sounds like it will be less of a hassle keeping them alive

Also, from your experiance, are most sundews very picky about their humidity or are they relatively hardy like the venus flytrap?

The Mighty Thor wrote:Also, from your experiance, are most sundews very picky about their humidity or are they relatively hardy like the venus flytrap?

It's very dependent on the species, but the majority of sundews don't require much humidity.

If it's any word about Sundews, I just purchased a couple of D. Capensis from the FlyTrapCare Store and they're doing great. I live in Boulder, CO, so you could classify it as "quite dry" here.

Thanks for the info, I need to look through these forums more before I ask more questions.