FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

My Neps keep having pitchers start dying off. They start right at the "waterline" and go up from there, and the lower half stays healthy. The pitcher looks pinched in along the waterline first, then starts to die. If I add water to move the liquid up past the line, it delays the decay but doesn't halt it.

Is this what it looks like when pitchers die from having too many bugs decaying inside? There are a lot of gnats getting in there, it looks like soup in some of them. Plus, the lasting pitchers are the small ones that are hidden under leaves and aren't catching much of anything.

That's an indication that the liquid level has been raised past the top of the digestion zone. Above that level the pitcher is much more sensitive and will easily burn due to nutrients present in the pitcher fluid.

OK, good to know, thank you. I'll pour a little bit of water out of each of the pitchers.

nimbulan wrote:That's an indication that the liquid level has been raised past the top of the digestion zone. Above that level the pitcher is much more sensitive and will easily burn due to nutrients present in the pitcher fluid.

Really? I've filled mine with tons of bloodworms and filled the pitchers to the brim by accident multiple times, but they haven't shown any type of damage. They're actually still alive and one of them is a couple months old already.

Sent from my SM-G928T using Tapatalk

Wikiwakawakawee wrote:

nimbulan wrote:That's an indication that the liquid level has been raised past the top of the digestion zone. Above that level the pitcher is much more sensitive and will easily burn due to nutrients present in the pitcher fluid.

Really? I've filled mine with tons of bloodworms and filled the pitchers to the brim by accident multiple times, but they haven't shown any type of damage. They're actually still alive and one of them is a couple months old already.

Sent from my SM-G928T using Tapatalk

It depends on the species. Some, especially the toilet-bowl species are much more tolerant than others. Any species with very rigid and thick pitcher walls is likely to be more tolerant as well. Feeding with normal food rather than fertilizer should also result in a slower release of nutrients that's easier on the pitcher.