FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

My VFT has grown new leafs, however the new traps are starting to turn black. I'm not sure if it is an unhappy plant or what to do to fix this (pictures included).
I recently bought the flytrap and am new to caring for them. Here's the details:
- Potted in peat moss
- Was re-potted last week from a 3" pot into a into a 9" pot
- Distilled water
- Since I'm in MN and going on month 6 of snow, I have it under a plant light where it gets about 3 hours per day

I have a moisture stick monitoring the soil to help me know when to water it. However I don't trust it very much because it will say the plant is dry when I can see water pooling out the bottom of the pot. I'm aware that the plant would ideally have longer light, however I was hoping it would be fine with this much until summer. I'm not sure if it needs more or less water, if the lack of light is hurting it, or if it is actually a health plant.

From what I see and what I know:

1) You should add clan perlite and/or silica sand to your peat. Otherwise not enough aeration for the roots and more likely to rot.

2)3 hours of artificial lighting is not enough, they should get around 16h/24. The distance of the fluorescent light should be around 8-12 inches from the plants. It doesn't seem close enough in the pic.

3) you can tray water when the pot feels lighter and the top soil starts to dry a bit.

Question: why is your VFT pot standing on another filled pot? As for the blackening traps, i'm not sure why...

Hope this helps. Other than that I let the experts chime in...

Thanks for your suggestions! After reading around on the forum, I saw that a lot of people recommended the peat moss mixed with perlite/silica sand. I had already potted it and I guess I hoped it would be good enough. But after reading your reply I think I'll be redoing the potting mixture.

As for the pot inside a pot... I'm going for the Piranha Plant from Mario coming out of the tube.

Isabelle already gave some good feedback.

To me it looks like the plant is being kept too wet and isn't getting enough light.

Also, what soil mix is in the bottom pot? If it is some sort of compost or soil mix other than peat, it could be getting minerals in the peat...