I kind of disagree with you not researching it first on text material like books. Since a book can provide a wealth of information, inquiring a person will give you limited information. Its simply too much for one person to type. The reason there are books out there, and one of the best is the Peter DÂAmatoÂs book: The Savage Garden. Amazon.com will sell books at a discount price, but you can find that book in a pubic library if you donÂt want to pay say $20 or $30 for it. It usually best to research what you want to buy before buying it 1st then asking questions later. To many a newbie have killed their plants right off the bat by adding fertilizer, planting them in regular potting soil and watering them with tap water. Or simply sending them into an irrecoverable shock by exposing them suddenly to drier air, under the sun, without hardening the plants 1st. As a result more then one newbie have wasted $2 or $5 when some purchase their plants in a general store or nursery. But others have wasted $25, $50, and even $100 worth of plants they bought from a specialized nursery. The idea people go to forum to inquire to a particular problem like a pest problem and want to find someone how they handled that problem or learn what done wrong if a plant fails to grow. So if you donÂt want to research it yourself, people will think you will be to lazy to do you own work yourself and will eventually kill their newly purchased plants anyways. Now I donÂt now which pitcher plant you fed bugs and how small these insects are? Since the plants themselves sold by Lowes are quite small and lacking the digestive fluids inside their pitchers. Most likely whatÂs going to happen is the bugs are going to rot and kill the leaves. Sundews and butterwort (P. primuliflora) donÂt have catching appendage, since it is the leaves itself that does the catching. The leaves of sundews are covered with hairs and has a "dew" drop on each hair. Butterworts on the other hand their leaf surface is covered with sticky mucilage. DonÂt feed the plants, they can do that themselves. DonÂt try feeding the Venus flytrap, even if it grows new traps, it will be too weak to digest the insect. Digesting an insect takes a lot of reserve energy before it can utilize it. It may take up to a month or 2 for a VFT to recover. Now your "Should they be fed into the soil like a regular plant?", are you referring to adding fertilizer to the soil. If so DONÂT. That is a common mistake made by newbies trying to grow their 1st CPs, adding fertilizer to the growing media. Fertilizer will kill your plants, CP have a weak root system, and is mainly used to anchor the plant to the media and draw out moisture, and thatÂs it. Fertilizer will destroy that root system and eventually kill your plants. That also means not to use regular potting soil, even if part of the ingredients contains sphagnum peat moss and perlite. It also has other things like fertilizer and wetting agents. What you need is pure sphagnum peat moss and perlite to aerate the media, nothing else. Make sure it doesnÂt have any additives at all. You mix it up in a 50:50 mix. This is the true and tried growing media for most CPs. Sit the VFT, sundews, Sarracenia pitcher plants (the purple pitcher plant) in a dish with 1 inch of water. The butterwort P. primuliflora in my experience does well growing in straight long fiber sphagnum moss and likes its media quite wet. Nepenthes only require having their media most and not as wet as other CPs. Nepenthes will require a mix of long fiber sphagnum moss used for orchids, again make sure no additives and you can mix it with one part perlite and one part fine orchid bark. They like their media most but with enough drainage for their roots. Use distilled water to water them, donÂt use for any reason tap water, purified water, or drinking water. These still contain minerals that will eventually kill your plants. Second choice is rainwater collected in a bucket, followed with R/O water but distilled is still the best choice. For now have them growing in a wind sill from indirect sunlight in their own Âterrariums (aka the cubes-of-death by the CP community), lift one corner slightly to allow ventilation, checking for drooping or wilting leaves. Be careful not to let the media dry out. In a weak lift one corner a bit more, again checking for wilting and do this slowly. This way you can harden your plants to a drier environment and give the plants time to build the natural wax coating over their leaves that protects them from drier air. As they develop new leaves, gently expose the Sarracenias and VFT to stronger sunlight, keeping an eye on wilting or sings of burning leaves. Control the amount of sunlight to allow them time to harden. Although the sundew will recover the quickest, followed by VFT & Sarracenias. Neps may take 4 months to develop new leaves and even then it will not develop new pitchers. They are known to take about half a year to recover. Nepenthes, butterwort, and the sundew will do best growing under indirect sunlight or under very bright fluorescent lamps. Nepenthes especially require at least 12 hours of bright light to grow their pitchers properly, Neps are tropical plants that do receive long hours of light. That basically covers the basics but it is better to you research things 1st and read books for information to avoid mistakes in the 1st place. Good luck.

I say this because the storys that are pumped out by those nurserys that dont know any better go along the lines of "you need to grow this plant in 80% humidity or its going to produce deformed traps, its going to have stunted growth, and its not going to be as healthy" All of which is nonsense, the hardened off plants are far more hardy and tolerant of change than those that are babied in a 80% terrarium. The majority of my plants are indoors as well under grow lights, so I have no worry about hail or such things. It has just saved me a few hundred dollars on a fish tank and equipment as well as taking the extra hastle out of dormency at winter. What would I have done, carry the whole tank outside during dormency or the whole tank in the garage during this time? You may not have had fungus, neither have I, fact is with all that sitting humid air you are more prone to it. Like I said, people swallow this story that I stated above, just like I did until I took a chance with all these plants. A simple test is to try it yourself and see the physical difference between the humid conditions and the plant which adapted to your conditions. I can assure you that the hardend off plant both looks and physically feels stronger. Mine also recover faster from shock, and that is not my imagination. Over all they are far stronger plants that in my opinion would come out of any problems easier thatn those living in the tank. None of us get these things to see them die, we ofcause want the strongest and healthiest plants so that we dont have to post here about "what now?" The industry is full of the kind of nonsense that I quoted, thats what I speak of. Terrariums can be a nice looking feature to a house, I have no problem with that or terrariums overall if setup correctly, kinda like the effort that LG and alot of you put in your tanks. But what I cant stand is the position I was in as a new grower, here I am purchasing a FISH BOWL!!, with instructions saying to cover it with saren wrap. Now lets think about this. High humidity (up to 100%), still air, constantly wet conditions......where is this going too? Now I would have been a tad happier if there was a drainige system to get rid of any excess water and which would help get rid of the build up of minerals. I would have been happier if there was airstones to pump fresh air into the tank. But this kind of mentality is what everyone is pumping out today, that fishbowl could have EASILY started a fungus outbreak, how long do you think it would have taken before the other plants got it? I see so many people on here that Ive answered who are sticking their plants in tanks and bowls, not because they want to, but because they believe they have to from the bull they have read online. This is my complaint, people still dont know jack about so much in nature, guys like Byron_1 go along and run experiments to actually gather valid facts that they find, instead of sticking to info from some idiot that guessed it up 100 years ago. I think its time growers realise that plants and these ones in perticular can adapt very easily and very happily with greater benefits to them as I see it. And as far as your comment about the hail, as upset as I was that it happend, the plants are still fine and you know what, I took that risk and accept that. I am not prepared to go spend $200.00 on fish equipment when my plants are growing just as fast in this climate, and looking far healthier. I can only laugh at "your VFT will develop deformed traps under low humidity", ye well apparently my Big Mount VFT which has a 1.9" length trap that currently has 35% humidity here does not believe this. Cheers Sheldon

Hi Ive always noticed back home and in the states these small spiders with short legs, they have various colours from black to striped. Ive noticed this specie is always on my Pitcher plants as well as around my Drosera. They lie in wait and tackle the unsuspecting insects that are attracted to the plants. What really has interested me is that I found another one in my Drosera Capensis pot outside this morning. I picked the spider up (there are tons all over) with a piece of wire, i then thook a stick to chase it off. The funny thing is this, the spider REFUSED to move onto the drosera leaf, it rather took on the incoming twig, yet if I moved away from the drosera to a aspen tree leaf, the spider happily ran away from the twig to the non carnivorous aspen tree. Go back to the Drosera, same story, that spider will not set foot (or feet :) ) on that Capensis. I wonder if these spiders know how the Drosera's work and thus are aware of the dangers of setting themselves on the plant. Just like the Pitcher plants, these spiders seem to go so far after an insect and no further asif they know the pit below is certain doom for them. Anyone else noticed such behaviour? Cheers Sheldon

Do you know what type of butterwort? How much light is it getting? ARe you using reverse osmosis, distilled, or rain water when you water you plant? I would acclimate the butterwort to reg. inside/outside, where ever its growing humidity, by taking the plastic wrap off a little at a time. is it still new? how long have you had it? it might still be acclimating to its new environment. i would need a little more info to be of more help, sorry