FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

My expirience with outdoors are very very sad so finaly, after fighting for my plants' lives, I gave up on outdoors and moved almost all of them inside under lamps. I got alot of ideas and hints from forum so here it is. Don't judge hard, this is my first ever terrarium
1 10 gallon tank.
1 light fixture for reptiles with 3 grow lamps
hydrophonic clay pebbles - 2lbs
weed control sheet
media mix - 1-perlite, 1 - peat moss, 1 - long fiber SPM, chopped in 1 inch pieces for more flexible setting
FVTs - as many as you want to put in with extra space for them to grow.
Here comes pics

Immediately i stopped to gasp in horror as i scrolled down and saw your very first picture displaying a bag of MiracleGro Perlite. It pains me to say, because its a pretty sweet setup and looks like you spent a lot of time on it, that your better off in the long run taking it all back out now and NOT using that product. MiracleGro anything is generally bad for carnivorous plants. The fertilizers and nutrients they soak the perlite in burn the delicate root systems of the plants causing abnormalities and ultimately death. Other than that you did a great job, i had a very similar idea in mind myself and now i get to see what it could look like.

What types of grow lights are you using on the plants??
you would also want to give the plants about 16 hours of sunlight a day on the grow lamps.

Definitely take those VFTs out of that soil, that perlite is very high in nutrients and also get a fan. No air flow will cause a mold problem and a very unhappy flytrap.

I agree, MiracleGro everything sucks. With this perlite I was researching alot. This perlite doesn't have nitrients (as they say on the bag and on the phone) at all, this suppose to be pure without any additions. AND I soak it for a week - that was a first thing I got for my terrariums and I soaked it in RO water, changing it everyday, so hopefully everything what was there is gone. I hope. I am not 100% sure of course))). Lights I got in LOWES. I don't remember the brand, it was over $10 a piece. Lights are power savvy spiral ones, 2 of them 6500K (on both sides) and one is 2700K fluorescent (in the middle). All my peat moss, Long Sphagnum peat moss also went through week of soaking in RO (thanx to my hubby who sells those filters and installed one for us). So far all set up works good, plants started to recover, of course old, butned on the sun traps are diyng off, but slower then outside. Temperature inside 80-82F, humidity is around 50% and little higher at night. I turn lights on around 7 and turn them off around midnight, so plants get plenty of lights and water. I put Cephalotus on higher grounds so they would not get too moist. My nest terrarium will be for sundews cause my babies are burning away one after another - i already lost few species.

jrmc114064 wrote:Definitely take those VFTs out of that soil, that perlite is very high in nutrients and also get a fan. No air flow will cause a mold problem and a very unhappy flytrap.

my light fixture set up covering only half of open space on top. I was thinking about putting big fan over JUST my VFT area on top of all terrariums for more airflow, but in this room very closely I have huge silling fan and AC on the silling is also kicking 77F all day and 73F all night.

You would be better off breaking apart with your fingers, if your determined to use perlite, the dense packing foam that most products found anywhere are shipped in (tvs, appliances, etc.) than going through the process of soaking the perlite in water to remove any minerals. No chance of a future problem if you just avoid the source of the problem to begin with.

It's looking great, unicorn775! I hope all turns out to be well with the perlite and can't wait to see updates in future (please )! Good luck.

Beautiful setup! I might try that some time, it's a beautiful decoration
I'm not so sure about the Perlite though, no matter what they said on the phone, the front of the bag says "Enriched with Miracle-Gro"...
Granted, I'm super super new to this but with the low nutrient requirements, that's kind of scary. I am much more experienced with house plants and have had some burning problems with Miracle-gro on them, and they are supposed to be "ok" with that stuff.

thanx guys, I appriciate all comments. Using shipping supplies - cool idea. I might try it too.
So far my VFTs love the soil, but I am monitoring. If I see some degrading and gloomy plants, I will for sure take them all out. but for now - they feel good and recovering - pics taken after about a week from them being placed in terrarium. as you can see some of them don't have any traps - they burned outside and I had to do some snapping((((. But the rest of them feel good so far. I don't want to put them through another stress unless it will be nessessery.
For sure I will try to find different perlite but all I can find is small amount for big money

update. Seems like soaking perlite in RO for several days with multyple rinses works. my plants are still feeling good, have great colot and some started getting reddish as their species suppose to. YEY. Next terrarioum - sundews. I am already getting medium ready - perlite is in 3 days soak with 5-7 times rinse. In a few I will start soaking peat amd long Sphagnum moss. End of the week - trip for tank and light fixture. I an fgetting this set up a little different - I am ordering plants and seeds and will plant it all together. Pics will come as the work will be done. I already lost several sundews - D. pretty rosette, spatulata, capensis... BUT my Binata, who went through torture is thriving. I am getting 1-2 more of this fine species - love this one. Well. Will update later

Oki, my update after 2 months of setting one terrarim with FVTs and about a month with terrarium with sundews. Lost in a batle with Ceph - 1 of them got rotten after I pour too much water once. The other 2 are kicking good - they got few new pitchers and tiny leaves. Finally I could see color on my pink venus and other red colored traps - soooo happy Now my VFTs have to go through dormacy and I think I will shorten their daylight by 3 hours so now they get from 7am till 10pm daylight, I need an advice though - how much daylight VFTs should get in winter for them to get in "winter mode"? Also bunch of my ALL RED MIX and FUSED TOOTH babies are growing on the separate shelf under a fish tank.
Sundews I had to flood last week. They didn't like just wet roots, so I decided to make a little swampy kind of growing place. Picky sweethearts For some reason they started blooming like crazy - one after another. I let few to bloom just to see the flowers
Anywho... here is a pics from end of september before I started cutting off daylight. I will have to take a fresh pics in a few to see progress and changes. BTW - media is still with the same perlite (!!!) soaked for looooong time and I changed water everyday to wash out all the minerals and other stuff.
Enjoy. And comment of course with some critisism is good too

like the setup, like the s/n, wouldn't worry too much about the enrichment....the amount of fertilizer added to that perlite is very small, doesn't look a high density of perlite to your mix plus add the fact you soaked it. everything seems to look well to me so only advice I would give is do not mix your temperate drosera with your non-temperate drosera....just makes for a headache later. Other than that perhaps consider/think about your dormancy preparations.

cpbobby wrote:like the setup, like the s/n, wouldn't worry too much about the enrichment....the amount of fertilizer added to that perlite is very small, doesn't look a high density of perlite to your mix plus add the fact you soaked it. everything seems to look well to me so only advice I would give is do not mix your temperate drosera with your non-temperate drosera....just makes for a headache later. Other than that perhaps consider/think about your dormancy preparations.

Why I can't mix Sundews? Please
And there is my main question about dormacy. Can't find info about dormacy in terrariums... I was thinking to lower temp - I have to move my set up in garage, it doesn't have heat, so it will be cold real winter there. And change light balbs on cooler light, If anyone can help with any suggestions I would love to hear ANY. It is my first winter with terrariums and I kinda nervious. When I told my hubby how much $ is planted in my terrarium... he was... hm... surprised I don't want to freeze my babies and will appriciate any helping hand

unicorn775 wrote:

cpbobby wrote:like the setup, like the s/n, wouldn't worry too much about the enrichment....the amount of fertilizer added to that perlite is very small, doesn't look a high density of perlite to your mix plus add the fact you soaked it. everything seems to look well to me so only advice I would give is do not mix your temperate drosera with your non-temperate drosera....just makes for a headache later. Other than that perhaps consider/think about your dormancy preparations.

Why I can't mix Sundews? Please
And there is my main question about dormacy. Can't find info about dormacy in terrariums... I was thinking to lower temp - I have to move my set up in garage, it doesn't have heat, so it will be cold real winter there. And change light balbs on cooler light, If anyone can help with any suggestions I would love to hear ANY. It is my first winter with terrariums and I kinda nervious. When I told my hubby how much $ is planted in my terrarium... he was... hm... surprised I don't want to freeze my babies and will appriciate any helping hand

Why can't you well temperate sundews need a dormancy non temperate don't ............ but you can still put some non temperate plant under dormancy like capensis and binata
for the other thing lower the temperture and the light intensity ( plus lighting ) ect. 12 hours of light to like 8 or something

So glad it turned out well for you. Your plants look happy - love the fused tooth