FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

You can also try smoke water or paper. I've heard those work

I think im going to try these as a treatment:
http://www.southernbiological.com/seeds ... ter-discs/

I really dont feel safe smoking my seeds in my smoker or overheating them. Im going to do 3 or 4 with these, and ill do 3 or 4 more by trying to smoke them. The rest with GA3.

9 days for germinating B.Gigantea. I decided to just use GA3 method. Didn't want to cook these hard to attain seeds. Hopefully I can get them to maturity now! Im going to begin leaning slowly off the humidity little by little until one day they can grow in my conditions without aid. These are susceptible to the "D" word (I wont dare say it right now) hah!

Yes I've heard that as well. I started my seeds in a 1:2 peat:sand mix with no elevated humidity, then immediately after germination took the pot out of the water tray and only water it every couple days. Since my plant is grown up a bit I let the sand on the surface appear completely dry before watering it again and the plant is growing very well.

Yesterday I lost one of the B. Gigantea seedlings. Unsure if it was damp off, as i let the surface dry up before re watering. Once rewatering, it just dried up completely anyways before disappearing lol. Before it started its journey down the tubes, it lost all green coloration and became almost transparent. Today, I noticed the only other seedling that has germinated is doing the same thing. Due to little to no information on the species and the difficulty of attaining the seeds other than family who doesn't have any more right now, i doubt i will try those again for a long time. Hopefully i will get my B. Aquatica seeds to wake up soon maybe...until then im going to look for gigantea cuttings

That is rather strange. I would guess it's either damp-off or the pot dried out a bit too much between watering, though I've only done this once myself so I can't say for sure. I don't know how quickly this species develops roots either. Don't give up on the other seeds just yet though. Were the seedlings still under high humidity when that happened? You might try keeping the rest of the seeds at normal humidity and see if any more germinate - I think damp-off would be less likely to occur at lower humidity.

nimbulan wrote:That is rather strange. I would guess it's either damp-off or the pot dried out a bit too much between watering, though I've only done this once myself so I can't say for sure. I don't know how quickly this species develops roots either. Don't give up on the other seeds just yet though. Were the seedlings still under high humidity when that happened? You might try keeping the rest of the seeds at normal humidity and see if any more germinate - I think damp-off would be less likely to occur at lower humidity.

The very day that i noticed they germinated, i took them out of the covered area where the humidty was higher and put them on a rack directly under some lights. In this area its about 35-40% which doesnt really seem to bad. At one time I noticed the peat in the medium was beginning to turn a slight bit light in color, indicating to me that it was time for a little water. But it did not stay on the dry side like that long as ive been watching these seeds like a hawk. At that point I just tray watered until the peat pot couldnt soak up anymore, and i would just discard what was left over and kept it slightly damp for the rest of its short lived time. For part of the morning i found a spot where it could get some natural sunlight. When I began seeing the decline, it was probably too late to treat it but i went ahead and put a very light sprinkle of cinnamon on the soil surface in case it was fungus related. Heres a couple of snapshots i took about 5 minutes ago. Its clearly not going to make it. I have one more pot of Gigantea and 2 pots of Aquatica left still. I went ahead and put a little cinnamon in those too as a precaution until I can see whats going on. Its very disheartening that they really didnt get big enough for me to have a chance to properly diagnose what Im dealing with before they died. Then again this has happened a million times before with other seeds as well.

Yeah that looks like damp-off to me. I wonder if there's something in your peat that's making your plants more prone to it? Do you rinse your peat and have you tested the TDS of it while doing so?

I wish you luck with your other seeds, and if you should try the gigantea again in the future.

nimbulan wrote:Yeah that looks like damp-off to me. I wonder if there's something in your peat that's making your plants more prone to it? Do you rinse your peat and have you tested the TDS of it while doing so?

I wish you luck with your other seeds, and if you should try the gigantea again in the future.

Yea, theres no telling i guess. The peat I use is from a big bale that i keep stored in an air tight container, and it is about a year old now. Before i use it in any mixes that I make, I boil it on the stove in distilled water for about 20 minutes or so, while stirring it up. Long enough to kill whatever may be lurking in it. Afterwards, It gets rinsed thoroughly with distilled until I bring the tds down to around 10 or 15ppm. I usually dont have any issues using it. It definitely looks like damp-off due to how the root looks choked off right above the soil line. Oh well....
Thanks for wishing me luck. I have 3 more pots like this to make something good happen.

Yeah I rinse mine down to about 15ppm as well, though I've never attempted any sort of sterilization. I've tried 50ppm in the past but almost nothing will grow in it.

I just wash my peat, I don't sterilize it. I also use about a 3:1 ratio of sand to peat for my Byblis, I just sit them in water. It is possible that the seed just had poor genetics, or issues with storing the seed affecting the health of the embryo.

I believe i used a 1:2 peat, sand mix on these. Interesting thought. I can definitely see the possibility of bad seed storing too. I can vouch for about half of them as I know the source . The other half theres no way of knowing. I usually always sterilize peat when i use it due to my past experiences of storing it in places where ive left it uncovered for long periods of time. Then finding bugs in it etc. Now its all stored in a large sealed container, but i still have the old habit of cooking everything i touch lol...I found a couple more seeds in the other pots that havent germinated yet so i went ahead and put some antifungal goodies on the soil surface. Hopefully ill see something soon. Ill probably start my Roridula seeds once I find out whats going on with these byblis seeds. Until then, ill be the Liniflora kid lol. :'(

I generally start my more sensitive in 1:2 peat:sand as well as I feel like the surface (and hence the seeds) ends up too dry if there's too much sand. I wouldn't think that seed storage would be an issue here - old seeds should simply have a lower germination rate, not result in weak plants. I know my seeds were from a known unreliable source which is why only 1 out of 6 germinated for me, 1 turned into a mold ball, and the rest have just been sitting there.

When my peat started going bad last year, I decided to start storing it dry since that prevents it from decaying and hopefully discourages bugs from getting into it as well.