FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Alright my venus fly traps (One king henry, red Dragon, and dente) have been going downhill for a month now. Around a month ago they were doing pretty good, growing flowers eating crickets like crazy life was great and they had been like that since I took them out of dormancy little after Valentimes day.



Then I noticed some stunted grow on the new leaves coming in. They were becoming extremely deformed and some had some weird growths on them.



I tried applying a very diluted form of neem oil thinking that maybe it was some insects or fungus but its been a week and a half with no improvement. Below is some context of where the plants are growing.



Usually with watering I water from the top then let it dry out a bit then water it again. Bottom of tray usually always has water in it. Only used distilled water bought from grocery store.



Other carnivorous plants, sundews and Pitcher plants are doing fine.



Lighting is artificial light on a 12 hour photoperiod mixed with light coming in from a north facing window. I'm at my wits end here don't know how they could start going down hill after being fine for months. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

It seems to me that all your plants but the flytraps are happy... I can't imagine what could be wrong, as it looks like your set-up is fine. Perhaps there could be a chance of pesticides contaminating the flytraps? Pesticides are known to cause deformities in to dionae and other CP's, but that's all I got, sorry.
Hopefully someone will figure it out~
EDIT: Oh, I see they're flowering~ It's probable that those flytraps are weakened by their blooms.(?)

Yes, it seems the flowers are or were weakening the plants.

The flowers deff suck out a lot of energy. Just keep them in good growing conditions and they should bounce back. Your other plants are looking well so thats a good indication your taking good care of them. Id maybe keep the water level lower or let it evaporate before refilling since they are indoors. Your sarrs and drosera wud be fine in the tray method though.

Hmm... would have thought that they would have recovered from the flowering by now, its been at least a month since I cut off the flower stalks off. As far as the pesticides I only applied those last week as a last ditch effort to try and fix the issue, they had been going down hill before that. I guess something that I didn't include in the opening comment was that the soil composition was 1 : 2 : 1 perlite, sphagnum peat moss, long fibered sphagnum. Anything wrong with that? Seems to work well with the pitcher plants and sundews that I have. I'll keep an eye on them, hopefully they'll bounce back

It may be the water level. I've just been keeping the trays full just like I do with the sundews but if the VFT don't like that I'll let them dry out more. Humidity has been increasing dramatically since June, around the time that the issues started so that may be the culprit. From my measurements it went from an average of 50% to 70% so I'll let the tray dry out more before re-watering thanks for the suggestion.