FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Hey everyone, I hope things have been well. I haven't been on the site here or grown any CPs (aside from my Nepenthes x ventrata from Lowe's, it's doing well) in well over a year...probably more like 2 and feel I need to reintroduce myself. My biggest downfall in this hobby and the reason I've been dormant for so long is that I always end up forgetting to water my plants for extended periods of time.

That being said, I am attempting to revive my previous fervor for growing Dionaea and Drosera with a little project. I've picked up 3 plants from Lowe's that will serve as guinea pigs and built a prototype/proof of concept. I plan to make a functional piece of furniture which will automatically water all plants once every other day or so (???) and turn lights on and off regularly. Currently I am using a 5 gallon bucket, a spare pump from an aquarium, and a plastic organizing bin with small aquarium gravel in it. I also have a 13watt, 5000k led from Lowe's hanging over this contraption atm. If anyone is curious about what it looks like currently I can get a picture tomorrow. Any thoughts about this or personal experiences with similar things would be nice to hear.

I may end up making a thread dedicated to my development of this, depending on how things go these next few day. Let me know what y'all think.

Patrick

Welcome back. I think this is a cool idea but won't you forget to fill the bucket?

Huntsmanshorn wrote:Welcome back. I think this is a cool idea but won't you forget to fill the bucket?

I'm kinda stealing the idea from my saltwater aquarium. It also has a 5 gallon bucket of water that is used to automatically replace water that evaporates. I do good with keeping that filled, so I figure I should be able to manage this. I'll have to do more testing, but I imagine a 5 gallon reservoir won't be depleted for about 2 weeks. My main concern is that nasties will start growing in the water and make it smell bad, so a UV sterilizer may be in order...another possibility would be to automatically refill the bucket with RO water straight from the filter.

Patrick