FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Hello everyone! I am a long time animal enthusiast and a blossoming plant enthusiast (hehe). I have always had fish since I was around 10, when I turned 13 I got my first 10 gallon with a betta, some otocinclus, and neons, around when I was 16 I upgraded to a 29 gallon tank with some blue gourami and other small fish, this was my first planted tank and it did very well. I went off to college to study film and I felt something was missing from me, as I had always had a tank to look in since I was 10. I ended up getting a pinstripe ball python, she has always been big and needed a quick upgrade from a 10 gallon soon after I got her. That summer I upgraded my fishtank in my room at home to a 60 gallon tank with slow growing plants (anubias, crypts) in order to make the fish more manageable for my parents, as well as give Mia Wallace (my BP) a bigger tank.

Now we have a problem though as I have a 10 gallon with nothing in it (my best friend and I share this passion for plants and animals, we call this the 10 gallon curse, you upgrade your animals and have an empty tank which you fill, only to have that animal outgrow that and it becomes an endless cycle) so I decided to build a paludarium, the initial plan was to have fish in the bottom, but it is only about 25% water so I decided to get some nerite snails, they are the only animal inhabitants aside from the hundreds of dwarf white isopods and tropical springtails. I have several plants, a pothos, begonia rex, two small bromeliads, 4 tillandsia pink stars, 2 tillansia aeranthos, 2 croton mammy in the far back that I have stunted growth on to maintain them small, a fern (I do not know anything about ferns), some Hedera helix, and in the aquatic section there is some baby crypts, and some anubias, all propagated from my fish tank at home, the pothos has grown a vine into the water where it shot some new roots, which was really cool to me. I plan to renovate a section of this tank in order to grow a small nepenthes, with that I intend to introduce a large species of isopod to the environment (possibly powder oranges or powder blues), and 5-6 vampire crabs. I have been growing out the plants for a year now, and I am excited for the Reptile Super Show in Pomona next month as I will likely find some crabs to purchase and give an awesome habitat. I even already added hides for the plants to grow over.

Aside from plants the only other thing I have is isopods and springtails, I have 6 species of isopods, and 2 species of springtails however I do not have the temperate springtails in a culture, they just coexist in my enclosures.

I just recently gained an obsession with carnivorous plants when my best friend showed me a capensis on reddit, it has been a month since that video and I currently own a hybrid Nepenthes and a Drosera capenis narrow leaf, the exact one my friend showed me. I have seen my Drosera capture a gnat already and my nepenthes is producing 1 small pitcher that I have been watching very carefully. It has been an exciting experience thus far and I don't intend to stop here. This year when my girlfriend and I moved out of the dorms I cleaned out a lot of my old belongings to make room for a mini greenhouse and/or bog garden to bring back to college. My home away from college is in the high desert, so with humidity being lower, I have been thinking about starting the summer off with some more Drosera if my current one does ok. If you made it this far, congratulations! You have read an abbreviated version of my life and my obsessions. If you have suggestions for some plants that like low humidity, let me know! Thanks for reading, have a good day.