FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Hi, I repotted and moved my plants to a grow light about 3 months ago and it is still struggling. It is under 4*55w 6500k Osram light with the lights on 16 hours a day, space between light and soil is 15cm. It is in 30cm deep pots and I give it distilled water through holes i drilled in the bottom of the pots (which are actually small plastic trash cans). Occasionaly ive watered it from the top too.

I've had these plants for about 4 years, and it did great when I could keep it outside in the beginning. I've moved to an appartment and unfortunately cant have it in the outside sun, so for the last year or so it was in my window sill which only gets half a day of sun. There it did okay ish, I thought the move to the artificial light would help but it has really gone downhill in size and dying leaves. I repotted it end of March and pretty much all the leaves you see grew under this light, the plants seems to grow but die off again.

Any obvious signs of wrong care? The only thing I'm not sure of is the watering scheme, I may have overwatered it as it's hard to tell the soil moistness as the top is always dry in these tall pots, does this plant looks like it is overwatered? It is in a 50/50 peat perlite mix btw.

Thanks to take a look and hopefully I just did something obvious wrong!

The light level looks good.

Did you make sure your peatmoss is absorbing water? I have to squeeze and knead mine after adding water when mixing media. Otherwise it won't absorb it.

Do you have a TDS meter? Is there a chance that there is fertilizer or something in your media? Top water it and measure the TDS of the runoff. See if it's OK, in the ballpark, or off the charts.

Did you let your Flytraps go dormant over Winter? Skipping dormancy can lead to unhappy plants.

Take these suggestions with a grain of salt. I'm a Drosera guy, and just tossing in my two cents worth, along with some hackneyed cliche's.

Good luck.

Good growing,
Mike

Looks much too dry. It's harder than most think to over water VFTs unless you really don't get that much light and have low evaporation.

hard to judge there with the deep pots, but the top does look dry in the photos. outside of that I'll defer to others with a lot more experience!