FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

You will have to repeat the process until you get rid of all the eggs/hatchlings...otherwise, it will be a never-ending cycle.

Update: I submerged it again. This time only for three days. The weather changed and became colder and rainier as it should be. The temperatures might drop to -1 C°. Will the plants be ok while they are submerged in cold temperatures?

Update: The (hopefully) final submerging just ended today. All this dunking and drying somehow enhanced the dormancy? Most old leaves died and it grows very slowly new smaller leaves with wider petioles. Before this experiment it had a lot of old traps and 1 - 2 dormant leaves.

Let it dry out some but be sure it has some moisture still available. New leaves appearing sounds good!

I have never had pest issues on fly traps, I did have some on inside cape sundews submerging did not solve my issue. Strong spray downs of sulfur based insecticide did, but my sundews looked like crap for a month. I did 3 treatments 4 days apart.

Hope the submerging works for you.

optique wrote: ↑Sun Jan 29, 2023 5:50 pm I have never had pest issues on fly traps, I did have some on inside cape sundews submerging did not solve my issue. Strong spray downs of sulfur based insecticide did, but my sundews looked like crap for a month. I did 3 treatments 4 days apart.

Hope the submerging works for you.

I have heard that the submerging method doesn’t work well on sundews because they trap a lot of air bubbles on their leaves.

Update: Bad frustrating news. I can already see some webs on the leaves. They survived. I cannot understand how I got rid off the spider mites that infested my Sarracenias at the hot summer with just simple misting, but I cannot get rid off these mites while the plant was submerged for days! FOR THREE TIMES! At least in the next week the temperatures will drop below 0C° and it might snow too. What should I do now? (I don’t want to use miticides etc, but if this situation continues Then I will).

@Barlapipas 6, Could the webs on it be ancient cobwebs? Because I noticed that there was still a spider's web on the flycatcher that I had immersed in the water and taken out. And these were definitely old. Also, if I understood correctly, your plant is in the outdoor environment and during the dormancy period. I am sure that even just cold weather will kill spider mites. Because I've seen that recently. But if the mites have adapted to the environment or if they are still alive despite immersion in so much water, my advice to you is to remove your plant from the soil and immerse it in the water again. Because the only thing that comes to my mind is the formation of air bubbles in the soil and the fact that the mites survive using them. So maybe it will help to remove it from the soil and immerse it in water. An average of 3-5 days will be enough. After removing it from the water, it will be an additional measure to wash it with water cannon once a day for 3 days before planting it in its new soil. After all these procedures, it would be most logical to plant it on a new soil and wake it up with artificial light.I want to point out that there is absolutely no guarantee of the methods I have mentioned. Maybe they'll work, maybe they'll not work. That's why you may want to listen to the opinions of people who are more knowledgeable and more experienced in this subject first. I hope you will get rid of these monsters as soon as possible.

Unfortunately this winter was very warm in comparison to the previous ones. On average the January temperatures increased by 3.4C°. A climate phenomenon is causing this. It turned the winter in Europe warmer and in America colder. The temperatures never dropped to 0C° this winter so the mites didn’t have a problem. Only now the temperatures are turning back to normal (10C° - 0C°) so I hope they don’t survive. The temperatures might even drop down to -4C° so I won’t submerge it yet until the weather gets warmer. The good news is that I don’t see any new webs and the other ones broke or something.

Update: I didn’t submerge them again and I didn’t see webs until yesterday. I got frustrated and as I was about to submerge it I saw a tiny grey spider on the webs. Then I saw another one. I encounter them often but they build the webs on the soil surface. They are 2 mm big and they hide VERY well. So the submerging probably worked! But I am still watching over it to see if there is new damage. So if your plant hasn’t any damage but it has spider mite looking webs, double check and triple check before you do anything.