Hi Well firstly, I had my first setup in a fish bowl, I dont like them things. You say you have a cover for it and it gets good sun. If your fish bowl terrarium is getting actual hot sun the plants will infact cook in there. If you want them out in the sun, then a terrarium is not the thing to have. You can either put them in something like your gator room with the correct soil (peat moss/perlite) and good fluorecent lighting, or you could try to harden them off and put them out in the sun with no terrarium. I dont know how low your humidity is there in new mexico but here in Salt Lake city its at about 30-40% most times. It does shoot up now and then with all the rain we are having though, anyhow, my VFT's are growing very well in 30% humidity with no problems. They have a 50/50 peat/perlite soil mix, and are in 6" pots. You can harden off a plant (adapt it) as follows: 1) have a cover over your plant and have it in a brightly lit area that does not get harsh sun (fluorecent lighting would be good if availble though) 2) Lift one side of this cover or dome 1" and leave for about a week (3-4 days should be fine) 3) lift a second side and leave for the same period of time 4) lift the last 2 sides (so all 4 are now raised) and leave for the same amount of time. 5) Remove the cover. Your plant should now be adapted to your humidity (if you just remove a plant from a high humidity terrarium it will go into shock) Next up, i you want your plant to get full sunlight you need to adapt it to the suns UV rays. Place the plant in an area that gets morning sun but is shaded from the harsh afternoon sun. Slowly move the plant into the full sun over a period of a week. As long as you are using good distilled water and good soil mix, your plants should do well. hope this helps Sheldon

I saw this tread and thought "Oh my God! My father has come back from the dead!" When we lived in St Louis, my parents lived in an old (c1914) three story house. My father had his "gun room" on the 3rd floor - reloaded all his own shells. He also had multiple bird feeders on our terrace and in our small, narrow backyard. Daddy took it VERY personally when a squirrel would get the food out of the bird feeders. He spent a fortune on "squirrel-proof" bird feeders; they were not. So he would stand at the window on the 3rd floor and use an air rifle (the kind children use to receive for Christmas) and shoot the squirrels at his bird feeders. My mother and I were horrified; I'm sure some of the neighbors were as well, but no one ever called the police. The squirrels always won. They just sent in reinforcements and my father could not be on guard 24/7. No, it was NOT dementia. It was just a man who was born in a small rural town in 1901 who was given his first rifle at age 6 and allowed to go out shooting with a buddy. Amazingly, no one was ever hurt. If they shot a song bird, his mother had plenty to say about it. To him, this was normal. You can take the boy out of the country but you can't take the country out of the boy.

I'm glad that worked! There are so many crooked AC guys in Florida who will take advantage of homeowners not knowing about cleaning coils or other minor maintenance issues. When it's really hot and humid outside down here, people will do anything to get their AC back on. Shortly after we bought our first home, we were told by two different AC guys that we needed a new compressor. After putting all our money into buying the house, we didn't have a spare $3,500.00 lying around, so we were really worried, but we knew that living without AC was not an option. A refrigeration guy who worked where my husband worked at the time said he'd come look at it for us. Turns out that all we needed was a new wire that cost $0.19, and the compressor was still running fine when we sold that house five years later. This was the guy who told us to always check the coils first before believing a repair man. It wasn't the problem that time, but it has been several times since.

Right^. If properly watered prior to, a one-week layoff from watering should not be significant. Nothing to be done however, except the big usual-water management. And that too means simply to water if needed, nothing more, nothing less. Usually a once-a-week schedule is adequate, although one must adjust any such schedule-not the best way to think of plant's watering needs-according to extant conditions. If it's been 95 F every day and high winds, to use an exaggerated set of conditions (although not impossible by any means), this "schedule" may need to be altered. Your fingers in the soil will tell the tale.