FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

hello,
i am new to this hobby and i am very excited. i am moving to Dubai which is very hot, temperatures can reach up to 104 Fahrenheit. so i decided to grow them indoors but with natural light. i have a few venus fly traps that are still small. i just have some questions. can a baby or young vft survive during dormancy if the temperature is 75 Fahrenheit day AND night? or should the temperature changed during the day and night? one other thing. can you feed a vft during dormancy or will feeding it disturb its dormancy?
thank you!

75 is too warm to trigger a dormancy. It's fine for the growing season though.

For dormancy, you'll want to gradually reduce the amount of direct sunlight. If it never gets below 75 where you are, you might want to put the plants in the refrigerator from October through March, which is not ideal but better than no dormancy.

Also do not need feed traps during dormancy. It's their resting period. Feed only during the growing season.

i am thinking of something different, i am not sure if anyone has ever tried it.
what if i make ice cubes from distilled water and place them next to the vft to put them into dormancy while watering it at the same time?
and what is the maximum temperature that the vft can have while still going into dormancy?

Dormant VFTs need a lot less water than in the growing season. In the winter, I only checked mine once a week, and watered maybe once every two weeks. So you wouldn't be doing the ice cube thing often enough to keep them that cold. But you can certainly try! We don't learn new things if we don't experiment.

The highest temp they can be during dormancy is 50-55 F.

I just found out that I can get my stuff for indoor dormancy. I decided to uses artificial lighting. How long should the day and night be for the plant during dormancy?

Mine go dormant just fine with daytime temperatures at ~75 F or ~24 C. That is their conditions pretty much every year. It gets cooler at night (~60 F or ~16 C) and with the shortened photo period (which in my opinion is the trigger for dormancy) they all experience a proper dormancy.

How long should I keep my growing lights on during dormancy?

My plant had days up to 75 degrees during the winter, and they did not come out of dormancy. it depends really on the amount of light they get though. however, optimum temp is, as mrsmuscipla said, 50-55 degrees F. also, for keeping lights on, I would add four hours to whatever light they would get outside. so, eight hours of light a day outside equals 10-12 hours of light using artificial lighting. I would start with 11

cyph3r_gfy wrote:Mine go dormant just fine with daytime temperatures at ~75 F or ~24 C. That is their conditions pretty much every year. It gets cooler at night (~60 F or ~16 C) and with the shortened photo period (which in my opinion is the trigger for dormancy) they all experience a proper dormancy.

katya_dog1 wrote:My plant had days up to 75 degrees during the winter, and they did not come out of dormancy... however, optimum temp is, as mrsmuscipla said, 50-55 degrees F.

Yes! Thank you yes! You two have no idea how good those testimonies make me feel. Even though I was living just 100km south of where I am where I was successfully growing Fly Traps for many years, I was afraid that the more stable temp. and coastal environment I'm now in contributed to my plant's death. Now though I'm thinking it may have been more to do with bad water/neglect. My area's temperatures during the winter months are apparently on average 22°C max. and 11°C min. The "high max." says 28° , but I'm hoping that's just the record high out of so many years for that month of Aug.

katya_dog1 wrote:it depends really on the amount of light they get though.

cyph3r_gfy wrote:...and with the shortened photo period (which in my opinion is the trigger for dormancy) they all experience a proper dormancy.

Yes I've seen this point discussed a number of times, although a Sarracenia specialist in Canberra seems to be of the mind that VFT are "impossible" to grow from coastal South-East QLD northward, judging from this post within his blog. He makes some good points, but for my plants' sake I really hope I can prove him wrong. . For reference, what is the recommended dosage of sunlight for dormancy? And are the hours you name referring to direct or out-door ambient sunlight?

Thanks for clearing some of this up guys, I appreciate it.
Edit: Kaytya... you live in North Carolina... you know what that means? (Of course you do!)