FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

I bought a venus fly trap at Lowe's in one of those plastic clear rectangles. Do I have to keep it in that thing? I was planning on keeping it inside under a 13W fluorescent lamp. Is that okay? How much humidity does it need, and will it be okay with the AC on?

Here's a picture of my set up as of right now. Please help a newb out!
http://twitpic.com/d8i23

Definitely take it out of the clear plastic cube. The one I got from Lowe's came like that and I keep it inside under a light. The main thing is to get it out of the cube and get it some distilled water. Tap water or drinking water will kill it. You can get a gallon of distilled water cheap at the grocery store, or you can use rain water. You may want to eventually repot it because those little green pots are kinda small, but you can wait until next spring to do that if you want. A styrofoam cup works great as a pot.

For now just get it out of the cube and get it some water. There are holes in the bottom of those green pots so make sure you put a small tray or something under it to catch the water.

Don't worry if it looks like it is starting to die, it will probably go into shock, but if you keep the light on for about 8+ hours and/or give it some sunlight in a window sill, it will grow pretty well.

Hope that helps, good luck.

Okay, awesome! Thanks for the reply

We have a reverse osmosis filtering system for our drinking water so hopefully that works?

Is your plant okay in the air conditioning, and did yours eventually get more red in color? Right now mine's mainly green.

Reverse Osmosis works fine I've heard. Mine is doing great in the A/C. I only got it 2 or 3 weeks ago, and it went into a little shock so some of the leaves and traps turned black and withered up a little, but 3 new traps are starting to grow. No red yet, still all green like yours.

Hello irachel and welcome to flytrapcare! Congrats on your new Venus flytrap. That's exciting!

irachel wrote:We have a reverse osmosis filtering system for our drinking water so hopefully that works?

Yes, an RO unit will work great for providing good water for the plant as long as the filters are still working well.

As Nick said, take it out of the cube and don't worry about humidity. It will adapt well to low humidity. Also, you're going to want to get it much closer to that light or put it in a very sunny windowsill. Your best option is to put it outside on a porch or patio where it can get full sun. If you do that now, it will get sunburned, but it will come back. If you gradually introduce it to sunlight by putting it in shade outside first, you might be able to prevent the leaves from burning. But even if the leaves do burn, it will come back fairly quickly.

Hope that helps and I hope that you become a regular here on the flytrapcare forums!

I've taken Junior (is it normal to name my fly trap? ) out of the plastic rectangle thing and sat the green pot on the clear plastic lid that was on the rectangle. I gave him some RO water and moved the light so it's closer to the plant. So far so good and thanks for the replies! Maybe tomorrow I will set it outside for a bit, since it probably wasn't a good idea today since it was a scorcher.. 100 degrees, yikes!

I set mine on the lid too, it works good for a water tray. Good luck, sounds like it should do just fine!

oh the venus flytrap can withstand temps over 100F awesome123

irachel wrote:Maybe tomorrow I will set it outside for a bit, since it probably wasn't a good idea today since it was a scorcher.. 100 degrees, yikes!

Ouch, that's hot! It was in the hundreds every day here about 2 weeks ago when we first moved to Ashland. Now the temps are more reasonable (in the 80s). As someone mentioned, VFTs can take temps in the 100s, but throwing them out into that temperature with full sunlight after taking it out of the cube where the humidity was near 100% would surely shock the plant badly.

If it were my plant, I'd probably remove the cover and put it on a windowsill for a couple days. Then move it outside in the shade for a few days. Then give it some morning sun for a few days and then give it as much sun as possible after that. It should minimize the shock, but it will still likely lose all of the foliage it has right now.

Some people say to just throw them out into full sunlight and let them burn to a crisp and then grow new foliage. That seems to work for some people too, but I think the risk of killing the plant is a little higher.

yo' i grow them in over 100F temps.. hehe.

allen,

Yup, id follow matts way of acclimating your plant. Its the best way to acclimate a plant without the risk of losing it. The only time i straight up put a plant outside after saving it is in early spring. Then, the temperatures arent to bad and humidity is fairly high. Depending where you live of coourse. Im sure it'll acclimate fine and start growing well for you.

I was going to say move it closer to the light. But I think the info the others gave you covers it all.

doku wrote:The only time i straight up put a plant outside after saving it is in early spring. Then, the temperatures arent to bad and humidity is fairly high.

That's very true. Also, the sun is much less intense in the early spring. I once saw a chart that showed how the sun intensity varied throughout the year based on the sun angle. I think that the sun in June and July is something crazy like several times more intense than it is in March and April.