Question
I have been trying to grow a variety of CP's from seed. Here is a picture of my D. Binata seedlings: http://i1221.photobucket.com/albums/dd469/entropy1981/IMG_13121.jpg

I have been growing them in a terrarium indoors. The air is very dry outside the terrarium but stays humid inside. The plants are about a month old and growing under 4 6400k 54W T5HO lamps about 2' above the plants, 16 hours a day. They were sown in rapid rooter tree bark peat starter plugs. I have been keeping them in a tray with standing water and watering with distilled/RO water.

They are still growing new leaves but all their leaves seem to turn brown and die almost as quickly as they grow. They are not growing new leaves as fast as they use to it seems. I have one plant now with only 1 live looking leaf on it, growing a new one but the rest have all curled up their tentacles and turned brown and dead looking. The plants seem alright at the moment but I am worried about the leaves that keep dying. Any idea if I am doing something wrong with these D. Binata v. Binata?

Answer
Hi Mark,

Thanks for including the photo.  It really helps.

Your seedlings actually look ok, but I'm going to speculate that the tree bark plugs are the problem.  I've used those only once, but did not get good results.  Bog dwelling carnivorous plants tend to be very accustom to growing in peat/sphagnum media which is very acid and full of tannins.

What I would do is see if you can carefully cut away your seedlings and plant them in peat moss.  I know those plugs have a spongy texture, so you might be able to use some sharp scissors and cut them out and plant them in peat media.  You might also be able to just put the whole plug into a peat moss/perlite mix and the tannins from the media would seep in and give the little plants more of the conditions they are looking for.  Otherwise you lighting sounds great, and D. binata varieties are somewhat slow from seed until they get to a certain size anyway, so part of this is just time.

Good Growing!

Jeff Dallas
Sarracenia Northwest
http://www.growcarnivorousplants.com