In my case I have pots of Venus flytraps crowded with Drosera burmannii, basically growing like weeds all around the Venus flytraps. I have my little 3 year old nephew to thank for that, last year in early November, he found the vial filled with seeds D. burmannii I've collected. Unbeknownst to me, he thought he would help me plant them by emptying the whole thing into my pots of VFT growing in the pots for 3 years now. I didn't understand him when he tried to explain what he did with the vial of seeds, i thought he spilled the seed on the lawn, couple of weeks later, I saw the burmannii plantlets growing, reaching flowring size by early January of this year. Right now my VFT are doing just fine despite their crowded condition. I think the issue is their roots, unlike normal plants, the roots of the VFT & Droseras are just to anchor the plant to the soil, it only draws water & that's it. No mineral or other nutrients is drawn from their roots so it doesn't affect them that much when crowded. One surprise is that my D. burmannii survived the cold winter easily. As long as they are protected from the frost, they did okay, sprouting and growing to flowering size despite the cold. I'm going to have them growing outside next winter how much they tolerate the cold. That it wasn't some fluke. This post was edited by hunterkiller03 on Sun, Apr 6, 14 at 14:32

"Yes, many plants don't need insecticides but some definitely do." That's kind of an absolute statement, don't you think? I haven't used an insecticide on anything since 1996, and that includes indoors and out while gardening in both tropical and midwest climates. I have tropicals now that summer outdoors and come in for the winter and they get nothing aside from a strong blast of water or soaked in a bucket before I bring them in. I believe that it is more about prevention and observational skills than anything else. If you see scale or mealybugs while there are just a few of them it is easy to get them off. If you wait until there are swarms of the things it will be more difficult. I think the best plan for indoor plants is to place them in cache pots so you can switch them out easily if one gets too bedraggled or looses its appeal. Keep the less than perfect in another area until you get them back in shape. And all youse guys with 'disposable orchids' can send them to me! It pains me to think of plants being destroyed just because their blooming period is over.

Good - native woodland. http://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=CHMA3 FataMorgana

I believe your problem isnt so much your lights as its your temperatures and the fact that the plants are right next to a furnace ^^. Im guessing your haworthias don't have a chance to absorb the water that is given to them, top that with extreme dryness and warmth that might be pushing the plant use up its reserves of water causing the sinking leaves syndrome. Transpiration 1) An increased rate of evaporation due to a temperature rise will hasten the loss of water. 2) Decreased relative humidity outside the leaf will increase the water potential gradient. Drier surroundings gives a steeper water potential gradient, and so increases the rate of transpiration. Haworthias IME flourish when days are 60-70 and nights 40-50F. They really appreciate that temperature drop and cool temps. What are your average day and night temps? I think that will be most telling.