So i am moving my VFT outside and hardening it off. it seemed to be doing okay indoors for a few months but then the leaves started turning black and mushy and dying. i am trying to save it. there are still quite a few green leaves and stems on it. Ive only had it about 5 months and it is in the small plastic pot that it came in with that same potting soil. i water it with only distilled water keeping the soil moist. i read that they need high humidity levels and that they normally live in bogs so its pot should be submerged several cm in distilled water at all times mimicking it’s natural habitat. I’m not sure where i read this but i have been doing this. Now im worried that i have drowned my plant. should i repot it in perlite and sphagnum moss and move it outdoors?

I have read about the venus flytraps on a few sites and as far as I have read, it is possible to get a trap to close, you need some kind of tool that you can slide inside the trap, then hit some of the trigger hairs on it, when tapped in rapid succession, the trigger hairs will close the trap. I do not know what kind of nutrients are digested from insects, although some guy put dead skin cells from a bad case of athlete's foot in the trap. The trap digested the skin chunks into gummy, amorphous blobs that looked like soft scabs except it was an oddball experiment and kind of weird/stupid to me. I was wondering if it is possible to use fertilizers in the trap, then trigger it to close and see what happens although I do think the trap will just die. I have used my orchid fertilizer on the underside of trap leaves, applied by cue-tips but just enough to dampen the under side of the leaves. If any fertilizer gets into the medium, it will kill the plants so always be careful and only fertilize the underside of a couple leaves- not all of them all at once and not more than once a month because that will only sustain them if they are too small or ill equipped to catch their own food. It does work if you keep the feedings light and to a minimum so the plants just get what they need for photosynthesis or to aid sugar production from photosynthesis. I grow my carnivorous plants in the dead sphagnum moss, but I will try to get the live moss to grow as well since that is what carnivorous plants grow in for the most part, and that is the reason why they need to supplement their diet with light fertilizer in the form of small vertebrates and invertebrates. The sphagnum moss tends to pull calcium and magnesium from rain water, which leaves nothing but the excess hydrogen as a byproduct. This creates a very acidic environment where most plants that grow in it cannot get absorb nutrients properly as on the ph scale, soil ph needs to be around 5.8-6.2 to absorb the wide range of micro and macro nutrients. When soil ph falls below 5.5, certain nutrients needed by the plants are not absorbed because they are not readily available in more acidic environments. I hope this helps you as it helped me to understand the plant physiology more.

Your plant may have flowered if your lights are running more than 12 hours a day. It thinks its spring. Would have to disagree regarding the suitability of venus flytraps for terrariums. Given sufficient light they do quite well in a terrarium, although I always suggest keeping them in pots in the terrarium to allow for sufficient drainage. I have a few dozen that I produced in vitro that have been growing in terrariums now for about 5 years. Unlike some that I've bought in the past, the ones out of culture seem to be quite happy without experiencing dormancy. Perhaps it has to do with how they were raised. I give most of them 14 hours of bright fluorescent light each day, although I have a few that I keep on a windowsill and those undergo a muted dormancy each winter. They go outside in summer once the days are long enough. One way that you can satisfy dormancy is to put the pots in plastic bags and pop them in a fridge for a few months. I do this with my northern pitcher plants to get them to flower. Kept at 34 degree F for about 3 months the leaves remain green and the plants will flower when taken out. Considering that yours has decided to flower it might be better to allow it to continue growing after removing the flower stalk. As long as it keeps producing new leaves large enough to replace any that turn black it should be fine. Progressively smaller leaves indicate it is declining or going into dormancy

You are on the Vegetable Gardening forum, Smungung. Perhaps this forum would be more appropriate for your question Carnivorous plants forum