🪴 Venus Flytrap Care Guide

Provided by Solaxisflauna.com — your source for carnivorous plants, live feeders, and premium supplies.

Venus flytraps (Dionaea muscipula) thrive in full sun – aim for 5+ hours daily. Here in San Diego they stay outside year round. They are relatively cold resistant as they are from the temperate USA(Carolina) so they handle temperature extremes very well. Still, keeping them between 50F and 90F is ideal outside of dormancy. These plants are MUCH EASIER than what most people assume. Keep them outside or in very strong indoor artificial grow lights and you will find them extremely hardy plants, especially when the plants are shipped from a good source!
Indoors? Use a strong grow light (LED) for 12–16 hrs/day. You can purchase one on our website or from amazon. Good grow lights should be 1000W equivalent, which usually translates to 100W draw. A good rule of thumb is that the light should be capable of growing tomatoes or peppers indoors. We recommend hooking it up to a timer so it automatically provides a stable photoperiod, which only adjustments being necessary late fall for the dormant season.
Lack of light leads to green traps, weak leaves, and no coloration.

Only use pure water:→ Distilled, reverse osmosis (RO), or rainwater.→ Never use tap or spring water — it builds up minerals that harm roots.
Buying a relatively inexpensive Zerowater pitcher will enable you to easily create distilled water for cheap. Electrical water distillers also work. For larger applications or even less work, consider our Deionization systems which are a extremely budget friendly system to draw tds near 0. We live in an area where tap is 300-700 TDS, so we absolutely had to develop these for ourselves to keep our own costs down as well!
During the grow season, I find it beneficial to use the tray method on tall pots. Letting the tray dry once in a while is good, but not necessary with our soil mix which we have seen a lot less rot with. You can water them more often, but this is our suggestion to keep the labor down. Making your job a bit easier and automating everything really impacts how well the plants do, as it is hard to do small tasks consistently.

Venus flytraps need low-nutrient, acidic soil.
🛒 Premium carnivorous plant mix is available at Solaxisflauna.com.
A basic recipe is a mix of peat and perlite. Pure peat works too. Make sure it is NOT fertilized. Alternatively, sphagnum can be used also. Depending on soil quality, you will need to repot once every 3 years at least due to breakdown of the soil. Our recipe has lasted almost a decade, however.
Dormant season: survives down to 25°F (-4°C) with protection.

Dormant from late fall to early spring (approx. 3 months).
Growth slows, traps turn black – this is normal.
Tone down watering. Less water movement causes more potential rot
Some people skip dormancy, but over time this can become deadly for your venus flytraps. There is a misconception that inducing dormancy is difficult because of people touting the fridge method and other labor intensive ways to induce dormancy. Nothing like that is necessary. Simply do nothing if they are kept ouside, unless you happen to live on the equator. We are in San Diego, essentially near the southernmost part of the United states, and our plants go to dormancy by themselves in response to photoperiod changes. Indoors, simply change the settings on the timer starting around mid October.

Outdoor plants catch their own prey.
Indoors: feed small insects around 1/3 the size of the trap
We offer great feeder insects for plants. Blatta lateralis/Red runners, and any of our fruit flies are perfect for your indoor flytraps. We recommend refrigerating roaches for about 10 minutes before feeding off to make it much easier to work with as they will be immobile but alive.
Never feed: fertilizer, raw meat, or bugs too big for the trap to seal.

Issue	Likely Cause
Traps turning black	Natural aging, overfeeding, shock
Weak, floppy growth	Low light or poor soil
Yellowing leaves	Tap water, overwatering, root rot
No red in traps	Needs more light

NOTE: With common issues, some traits will be related to cultivar; for example, some cutlivars are known for being leggy and tall, or even pale.

Don’t trigger traps for fun — it drains plant energy.
Best color, growth, and prey capture occur outdoors in full sun, or with a professional grow light

For hand-mixed soil, pots, and more carnivorous plant care items, visit:👉 Solaxisflauna.com/shop

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