FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Greetings all! I am updating with a few concerns regarding my venus fly trap seedlings... They are very small, were doing fantastic, and now some leaves are looking like they are dry-ish and curling in weird ways; they began quite green, then turned a bit more pink over time, and now are almost all pink/yellow-ish. One or two also seem to have developed into a sort of "knot." Some leaves are pointy, turning black then a white color at the tips (though it does not seem to be mold as it is somewhat hard.) One plant is still doing fairly well, but is starting to look similar to the rest.
You can see my growing conditions in one of my other posts (or I can give more info if needed) and pictures here: https://sites.google.com/view/jessica-teeters/cps

Any advice or feedback is greatly appreciated!

Sorry, I missed your other posts...where do you have them growing? It is time for dormancy, so that could be the cause of the weird dry-ish and curling appearance of them.

If growing under lights in a place where they get some natural light (i.e. the room is lighter during the day time), they will usually pick up on the seasonal changes of sunlight and still have themselves a light dormancy.

Matt wrote:Sorry, I missed your other posts...where do you have them growing? It is time for dormancy, so that could be the cause of the weird dry-ish and curling appearance of them.

If growing under lights in a place where they get some natural light (i.e. the room is lighter during the day time), they will usually pick up on the seasonal changes of sunlight and still have themselves a light dormancy.

Thanks for replying, truly, any wisdom from the experienced growers on here has been invaluable. They are only 16 weeks old these ones so I'm not sure they would try to go into dormancy so young. They were springing with growth just a week or a little more ago. They are in a greenhouse (indoors since it gets freezing now and they're seedlings, though I do plan on keeping them outdoors mostly when weather shapes up and they're bigger) with plant lighting (https://www.amazon.com/Growing-Spectrum ... D82GKB3ENB) and a heat source underneath them. I tried natural window lighting, smaller fluval plant led, and floramax fluorescent lighting 3-way combo of light sources and still have not had as good results as with this light alone thus far. These conditions germinated my newer droseras and flytraps in as little as just under 2 weeks. There is fan ventilation from above and I keep the front flap half open. It keeps perfectly warm and mostly humid in there, but with the way they have begun looking I think they may have not gotten enough water for a while (I ran out of ro water for about a week before I could get another jug just recently, but hoped they'd be fine as moist as they seemed). The lights are on for about 14 - 16 hours a day and are 4 inches from them. The droseras I have growing in almost the exact same setup are booming! And for the first 14 weeks these have too, but I feel they look so uniquely weird lately; they even look strange in different ways from each other. I just felt the way they appeared to look so quickly changed, in such different forms, and like I've never before seen that it's a bit alarming.

Could it be that I had left them in the tray with water for most of the time before and then when I ran out for a short time it shocked them?

RhysKi wrote:They are only 16 weeks old these ones so I'm not sure they would try to go into dormancy so young.

The age of the plant has nothing to do with whether or not they will go dormant. All flytraps go dormant with the changing of the seasons, regardless of age. In the wild, flytraps set seed in July or so and it immediately germinates and grows the rest of the season until fall arrives and then the baby plants go dormant naturally. If yours are picking up on any natural sunlight in the house, they may be trying to go dormant as well.

RhysKi wrote:They are in a greenhouse (indoors since it gets freezing now and they're seedlings, though I do plan on keeping them outdoors mostly when weather shapes up and they're bigger) with plant lighting (https://www.amazon.com/Growing-Spectrum ... D82GKB3ENB) and a heat source underneath them.

I've never had success growing flytraps indoor long-term. They always seem to have problems within a matter of a few weeks to months. Whenever growing under lights and flytraps start doing something funny, I just move them outside to the greenhouses to let them sort themselves out and they almost always come around by the next spring.

RhysKi wrote:Could it be that I had left them in the tray with water for most of the time before and then when I ran out for a short time it shocked them?

If they got a little dry and were starving for water, that would certainly have set them back. Though, usually when they are that small, getting even a little dry will kill them since they have no root system and not much tissue to store water in.

Well, looking at the light that is apparently being used, I see the manufacturer recommendations are:

Recommended footprint: 2x2ft (Veg.), 1.5x1.5ft (Flowering)
Recommended Hanging Height: 1-2ft

4" above the seedlings may have caused sunburn.

Grow light manufacturer recommended specs are best ignored, especially since the amount of required light varies so much from plant to plant.

One of the reviews of the light says it outputs a ppfd of 300 from a few inches away. It's good that you place the light close to the plant since VFTs need a lot of it. That intensity of light won't burn your plant. However, if the light is of poor quality, it may produce too much heat right under the light. The heat can burn your plant, not the light.

Matt wrote:

RhysKi wrote:They are only 16 weeks old these ones so I'm not sure they would try to go into dormancy so young.

The age of the plant has nothing to do with whether or not they will go dormant. All flytraps go dormant with the changing of the seasons, regardless of age. In the wild, flytraps set seed in July or so and it immediately germinates and grows the rest of the season until fall arrives and then the baby plants go dormant naturally. If yours are picking up on any natural sunlight in the house, they may be trying to go dormant as well.

RhysKi wrote:They are in a greenhouse (indoors since it gets freezing now and they're seedlings, though I do plan on keeping them outdoors mostly when weather shapes up and they're bigger) with plant lighting (https://www.amazon.com/Growing-Spectrum ... D82GKB3ENB) and a heat source underneath them.

I've never had success growing flytraps indoor long-term. They always seem to have problems within a matter of a few weeks to months. Whenever growing under lights and flytraps start doing something funny, I just move them outside to the greenhouses to let them sort themselves out and they almost always come around by the next spring.

RhysKi wrote:Could it be that I had left them in the tray with water for most of the time before and then when I ran out for a short time it shocked them?

If they got a little dry and were starving for water, that would certainly have set them back. Though, usually when they are that small, getting even a little dry will kill them since they have no root system and not much tissue to store water in.

Thanks so much for the input, Matt! That's amazing that they could go dormant so young and still come back the next season... I definitely do not plan to grow them indoors long-term; I just thought I would give them the best start possible at this young stage of growth so that they could be hardy enough for the outdoors next season. If I stuck them out there right now, after being in the warmth of my home/light/heater, wouldn't that shock them a bit as well? Could I wait until Spring as planned before acclimating them to the outside conditions? The winters here get very harsh, and I don't want to harm them or stunt their potential growth...
Some have sprung back a little bit and look a little less brittle since I've replenished and maintained the water tray levels, but not all.

mcgrumpers wrote:Grow light manufacturer recommended specs are best ignored, especially since the amount of required light varies so much from plant to plant.

One of the reviews of the light says it outputs a ppfd of 300 from a few inches away. It's good that you place the light close to the plant since VFTs need a lot of it. That intensity of light won't burn your plant. However, if the light is of poor quality, it may produce too much heat right under the light. The heat can burn your plant, not the light.

Thanks so much for the feedback! Luckily, I had thought of the heat output from the light, and it is surprisingly low for how high the lighting output is. The thermometer in my little greenhouse keeps a good temperature, and the Sundews don't seem to be reacting the same way that the venus flytraps are reacting to the conditions so I think I could rule out heat or light burn. However, the lack of water for those days that I couldn't get more may have been the culprit. I just wasn't sure if anyone has seen VFT's look like this when growing or if there was something specific I was missing.

RhysKi wrote:If I stuck them out there right now, after being in the warmth of my home/light/heater, wouldn't that shock them a bit as well?

They would stall for a bit and then go dormant. There's no risk of killing them from a temperature change. The only growing condition change that I know of that kills baby flytraps is too much sunlight. Of course, they should never go dry either, but that is also true for large flytraps.

RhysKi wrote:Could I wait until Spring as planned before acclimating them to the outside conditions?

Of course you could! Given how they look (like they might be going dormant), that wouldn't be my choice, but they would do OK that way. I would just worry about how they do around early summer and the rest of the growing season. Any time I've skipped dormancy for any flytraps, even the smallest ones, they have never done well. Seems to me like they always want a rest period after growing 8 to 10 months, regardless.