FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Hi all,

New to the forum. Purchased a Venus Flytrap about 2 months ago from local Strikes garden centre. It's the first VFT I've owned in about 15 years.

My venus flytrap has been living off a healthy diet of house flies, the odd beetle and moths. As for liquid's it's mostly been given distilled water and rain water (a blend of top water and tray water).

I've only had to cut two traps which were victims of sun burn (you live and learn) and the plant seems very healthy (as of recent weeks it's been growing new traps prolifically). I successfully re-potted it today as the original pot was getting a little bit too lived in for the plant.

Here's a couple of questions that I have about my venus fly trap:

1. What is the best way to store rain water? I've been storing mine in a sports bottle (cleaned it prior to filling it with rain water).
2. Is rain water best stored at room temperature? Or can it be kept in a fridge? The reason I ask is because the last time I stored rain water in a clean jam jar it began smelling really bad after a couple of days.
3. Can rain water be further purified and boiled in a pan? Would this help or is it pointless?

Thanks all.

1.I keep mine in 30l drums in the garden, nothing fancy, just on the side of a shed (and it receives indirect sunlight), but if its a clear container watch out for algae growth.
2. Did you collect it after a long period of drought? (cause its not supposed to stink, if it does it likely contains nutrients and/or living organisms.
3. Boiling only kills off most of the living organisms in the rainwater, but it does not remove nutrients, other than that, it temporary lowers the pH of the water.

Sander wrote: 2. Did you collect it after a long period of drought? (cause its not supposed to stink, if it does it likely contains nutrients and/or living organisms.

Thanks for the help, Sander.

Yeah, I live in the UK and we are having an unusual bout of hot weather. The water I collected in the jam jar was the result of a long overdue rain shower. Probably why it stunk.

Haha, i live across the Chanel, i know the feeling, already lost a regia to the weather, and my darlingtonia's aint happy either, but the VFT's seem to be happy in their living moss

Last time i collected rain, the first 50 or so l had a TDS reading of 200+, i dumped it, collected again, and it was 30, i dumped it again, and the 3th time it was down to 6 or so, this was after like 1 month of drought and elevated temperatures, so i strongly recommend after periods of drought: wait at least 30 minutes before collecting water

Makes sense, I'll bare that in mind next time it rains after a lengthy period.

I keep the 1 gallon distilled water containers I've bought in the past when there was not enough rain and reuse those for storing rain water.

mfriend wrote:I keep the 1 gallon distilled water containers I've bought in the past when there was not enough rain and reuse those for storing rain water.

Good idea, mfriend. By the way, I've noticed you're from Fairfield? Haha, I thought it was Fairfield, UK. Which is only about 20 minutes drive from where I live!