FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Hi everyone - does this flytrap seedling appear to be in OK shape or is it slowly dying?




I'd planted a mix of both red and green flytrap seeds into this particular cup so I wasn't sure whether the odd coloration was due perhaps to it being one of the red ones? Maybe/I hope?

For reference, this is what it looked like about 10 days ago...



If this is looking like a case of under-watering I would love any feedback that people can provide as to how I ought to go about addressing the situation. It's been sort of a struggle recently - as may or may not be perceptible from the photographs, I've been having a pretty constant struggle against white fuzzy-type mold inside the cup. To combat the mold I've been taking the following measures..

1) Spray neem oil every night
2) Leave the flytrap cup outside on my fire escape over night (the thought being that air circulation would be good?)
3) I recently purchased a small fan that I've been running over the course of the day

In spite of these measures, I'm still seeing coat of white fuzz lying across the peat every morning when I bring the cup back inside, so for a while I was trying to reduce the amount of water that the cup was getting (i.e. waiting for a bit before refilling the tray after all the water had gotten soaked up). But then yesterday was when I started getting worried about the fact that its leaves were turning a darker shade of green, so I went back to my previous practice of keeping a small amount of water in the tray at pretty much all times. I also (as an emergency measure) sprayed a couple of drops upon the seedling itself.

Haha so yes I know that this is in general probably an excessive amount of involvement on my part and that all of these interventions of mine might be actually causing more problems than they're solving, but does anyone have any advice as to how to move forward?

Neem oil: cease, reduce or maintain?
Water: reduce, increase or maintain?
Leaving the cup outside overnight: cease, maintain, or it doesn't matter because the practice is pointless to begin with?

Or perhaps it's possible that the problem isn't under-watering but rather some kind of pest? If so, how might I go about figuring that out?

Thank you so much for whatever help you're able to provide!

Another question that just occurred to me is whether this kind of problem could potentially be caused by an increase in the amount of lamplight received per day? I recently started increasing the amount of daily light time for the seedling from 8 hours to 10-12.

Looks to me that the gray stuff on the top of the soil is some sort of mold? Hard to tell for sure from the photos, but it is pretty evenly covering the surface of the soil, so it is probably mold. It could also be some sort of mineral crust forming. If mold, treat with your preferred fungicide. If mineral crust, you'll need to repot.