FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

I bought a pretty little plant about a week ago. I've replanted it in a 'carnivorous plant soil' I bought on Amazon, I only water it with distilled water and it has a grow lamp which is on for about 12 hours a day.
I live in an apartment so I have no outdoor space and, although I have lots of windows, I don't get any direct sunlight.
I don't know what I did wrong, but clearly I did something! Can anyone point me in the right direction on how to save this plant or where I went wrong?
I'm posting a picture of how it looked when I got it compared to now

I'm not a Flytrap guru but your media looks much too dry. I keep my Flytrap pots moist but not sopping, saturated wet.

Welcome to the forum.

Good growing,
Mike

Dry media and your light might not be enough. What kind of light are you using? How many watts ? Lumens and how close to the plants is the light?

Do you have it planted in some kind of jar or terrarium???
The plant must have good drainage. It doesn't need high humidity that can lead to rot...It does look dry in the pictures...If you want a really good light that's not that expensive I highly recommend this one.

http://growgreenmi.com/sunblaster-cfl-2 ... AlAS8P8HAQ

Put in one of those bowl reflector clamp on fixtures that are used as a work light and have it about 8-10 inches above your plant....and I would put it back into a pot like in the first photo....

Thank you so much for your responses!
I have a 5W led lamp that's about 5" away from the plant...I'm guessing that's not strong enough :/
I gave it a good drink, I'll keep a closer eye on that!
It is in a hanging glass jar but the bottom of it is separated from the soil and has drainage holes to collect the water away from the roots, so I thought I might get away with it...I guess not

It's best to use a plastic pot with drainage holes at the bottom. A 5W lamp is definitely not enough light. A sunny windowsill is probably better than that. Media should always be moist but not wet

That flytrap is definitely starving for light. Like others have said the 5w lamp won't work to supplement them with light. There are tons of inexpensive lighting options you can go with. T5 cool white or cool blue bulbs are an example of inexpensive lights that can be found at pretty much any hardware store and will work great with carnivorous plants.


Also like others have said that container isn't really ideal for flytraps, unless it has drainage holes. You really have to be careful how you water them, as it is very easy to over water flytraps in a container like that.

Switch your bulb to a fluorescent (13W cfl or something) and look for 'daylight'. Cool not warm. The color temperature I've been using is 5000K Screw it into a $5 clamp light from Lowes, Home Depot or Kroger's/Fred Meyer and that should be plenty for a couple plants placed under its beam.

It's not that your LED isn't strong enough, it's because it doesn't emit the right light. They're designed to illuminate using the wavelengths that our eyes see best, and perhaps save energy by emitting ONLY those wavelengths. Think of it as digital. The wavelengths that plants need to be able to create energy are very hard for our eyes to see, so why would they include those? You might as well raise your flytrap inside a dark closed closet.

There are LED "grow lights" that emit wavelengths for plants. They're actually quite dark, because our eyes can't see those wavelengths very well. Sometimes the manufacturer includes white chips in those bulbs so people can be able to see their plants.

AaaaNinja wrote:It's not that your LED isn't strong enough, it's because it doesn't emit the right light...There are LED "grow lights" that emit wavelengths for plants.

Are you saying that VFTs need a different type of grow light than other plants? Or that the bulb I have maybe isn't a grow light?

Do you (or anyone!) happen to know the type of LED lamp I should get? I've been phasing out all my CFL bulbs and replacing them with LEDs...I can tell this plant is going to ruin that plan!

The current bulb I have is red and blue rather than white. I shall also go and search this info on the forum. I'm sure it's come up before!

Thanks!

They make daylight led bulbs take a look here...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00YEMKJ ... ref=plSrch