FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Here's a picture.
@uxleumas I appreciate the suggestions, but I don't really understand what you're saying. Is there a mesh fine enough to stop fungus gnats? They're really small, and a mesh that fine would probably hinder the seedlings' growth. The sundew offer is nice, but the time it would take to ship, repot, and establish a sundew would be too long.

I think I'll just repot. Will chopped sphagnum moss do? I'd usually use unchopped, but I think the strands would be far too long and hard to work wtih.

Silk organza is a very fine, sheer fabric. On my next batch of VFT seeds I am thinking about making a tall "shower cap" of organza to keep gnats away from my sterilized pot. Will also filter sunlight a bit, which may make direct sunlight more acceptable for the seedlings.

Dharma Trading is a reputable source of white silk organza.

The increasing TDS will tend to indicate the breakdown of the peat as previously mentioned. Get them out of it as soon as you can and repot in fresh clean media or LFS, 500 ppm will kill them in short order.

Good luck
Steve

Update. I repotted them. Surprisingly enough, all the remaining seedlings look like they have a good chance of surviving. I guess it's because their around a year old now, but they look exactly like flytraps, but on a smaller scale. Complete with decently sized rhizomes. I assumed most were on the complete verge of death. The repotting was a pain though, imagine all the frustration of potting normal flytraps with sphagnum, only on an action figure sized scale. But I'm glad there's more hope for them.

They'll be so much happier in their new home!

I know how tedious and challenging it can be to repot baby flytraps, but it looks like you did a great job

Just an update for those interested. I have good news and bad news.

Bad news is that only two of the seedlings survived the repotting. Good news is that those two are taking off! I think they're on their way to being adults in a couple of years with some feeding. I think the fresh soil really helped them. I also gave them a boost of that lawn fungicide stuff a while back when they were still struggling, so they might be receiving the effects of that.
I think from now on, I'll either start flytrap seeds in sphagnum or repot them into it when they start to decline. It seems to have made such a difference.

_-SphagnumFromHell-_ wrote:I think from now on, I'll either start flytrap seeds in sphagnum or repot them into it when they start to decline. It seems to have made such a difference.

Yes, flytraps hands-down are healthier and grow more quickly in sphagnum than in peat.