FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Good morning all,

I’m hoping one of the experts may be able to tell me where I went wrong. I got some Drosera spatulata fake ultramafica from the seed bank and they really took off. I repotted the 4 most vigorous ones and they’re struggling. I do have many more in the seedling pot, but want to know what I did wrong so I don’t keep murdering the plants.

Basics:
-LED grow light 13 hours on a timer. Also get some morning sun through the window. The light was sufficient to grow the seedlings as well as fly traps in The early spring.
-Reverse osmosis water reading 0-5 TDS
-sprouted in peat/perlite (excessively rinsed)
-transplanted into deeper pot. bottom layer LFSM. Middle peat/perlite. Top inch or two LFSM. (All excessively rinsed)
-I have cut all flower stalks to conserve energy for the plants.
-plants get fed dried bloodworms

Problem on repotted plants:
-the new leaves are shorter (forgive my lack of terminology or if it is incorrect). The petiole is shorter and the lamina is not formed.
-It has been a month or so of continuous shrinkage.

Thoughts/additional info:
-They are a few inches closer to the lights, but the spatulata x ultramafica next to them is fine.
-could it just be stress from repotting? One of the seedlings was uprooted and repotted in the peat and is exhibiting the same symptoms.
-I recently noticed a fungus gnat problem in the pot (2 days ago). I have mosquito bits on order and have tried to knock them back with what I have laying around. While the insecticide (permethrin) may cause burn/damage, it does not explain the past month.

The first 2 pictures are the seedling pot with the uprooted one exhibiting the same symptoms circled in blue. The next 2 are the repotted plants looking sick.

Thanks!

It seems I have stumped the experts. I feel a little less dumb! Not knowing what is causing this, I threw the kitchen sink at it. I hit them with mosquito bites, disease ex, and bioadvanced 3 in one. Whatever the disease is, it is spreading to the other containers. If they die off, everything is going to get tossed in the trash to prevent further spread.

What is the humidity level like? My temperate sundews (D. capillaris, filiformis, intermedia) get cranky after being uprooted. High humidity helps them get over it faster.

Thanks for your response!

Humidity checked at just over 60%. Now the ones what weren’t disturbed are beginning to exhibit the same symptoms. It is either a problem that spread or something I’m doing wrong. Given they were doing so well for the past few months (increasing in size and having good color) and are taking a sudden downturn, I’m suspecting a disease or infestation of some sort.

Hope the mosquito bits are working. If not, staring at the media surface for a couple minutes, a couple times a day and grabbing any larvae you see with pointy tweezers and smushing them in a tissue is surprisingly effective. That’s how I got my fungus gnat infestation under control recently after mosquito bits failed.

Thanks! The mosquito bits seem to be doing the trick. The adult population has vanished over the past few days.

Well it looks like they’re trying to recover! I see some small improvements here and there. Unfortunately, since I went the kitchen sink route, I don’t know if it was the mosquito bits or disease x that did the trick.