My LFS Turned Charcoal Grey.... ????

[TENroaches]

Or something's growing on it. I was checking on my two sundews last night before I went to bed.

I noticed one pot looked grey, while the other was brown. Oddly enough, the sundew in the grey looks healthier.

You can see the difference in the last one.

The one in question is 100% root offshoots because I killed the mother plant, much like I'm doing with the bigger one here....

Is this a fungus?

 

[Capensis]

Mold or fungus.

 

[TENroaches]

Mold or fungus.

Heck.

 

[Capensis]

Or mildew. Either way, bad stuff. Do they have enough aircirculation where they're growing?

 

[TENroaches]

Or mildew. Either way, bad stuff. Do they have enough aircirculation where they're growing?

No. You can read the thread about their living conditions over here. I'm still working on how to raise these. Drosera adelae honk me off like no other.

Would circulation cure this problem, or just prevent it in the future?

 

[Capensis]

I'm certain that it will, yes.

 

[CPlantaholic]

I would recommend flushing the media via top-watering multiple times to get rid of that and prevent future outbreaks. looks kinda funky.

 

[TENroaches]

I would recommend flushing the media via top-watering multiple times to get rid of that and prevent future outbreaks. looks kinda funky.

I took off the Sterilite container to give it more air circulation. Wouldn't top watering just push it all down into the soil? Or isn't that bad, because there's no light down in it?

At least my pitcher plants outside are doing well. :-(

 

[CPlantaholic]

Don't worry about the mold getting down into the soil during the flushing process. The point of top-watering many times is flushing the garbage out of the pot. I'd "flush" with a reasonable amt of water at least 10 times if I were to do it, but I'm really picky that way. From then on, you can top-water every couple weeks or so, to avoid buildup again.

The benefit of growing cps outside is that the rain automatically does this for you, so you won't have to worry about it. However, when using the tray method indoors, unless you're watering from the top every so often, minerals and nutrients build up on the surface, leading to what you are seeing in your pots.

I used to get mold on my peat and huge algae formations on my LFS. Now, I always rinse my media thoroughly even before planting anything in it, and I've never had another problem.

 

[TENroaches]

Don't worry about the mold getting down into the soil during the flushing process. The point of top-watering many times is flushing the garbage out of the pot. I'd "flush" with a reasonable amt of water at least 10 times if I were to do it, but I'm really picky that way. From then on, you can top-water every couple weeks or so, to avoid buildup again.

The benefit of growing cps outside is that the rain automatically does this for you, so you won't have to worry about it. However, when using the tray method indoors, unless you're watering from the top every so often, minerals and nutrients build up on the surface, leading to what you are seeing in your pots.

I used to get mold on my peat and huge algae formations on my LFS. Now, I always rinse my media thoroughly even before planting anything in it, and I've never had another problem.

I just picked out a lot of the ashy-looking pieces. Some of it was almost dusty. I guess I should go flush it now.

My other sundews that I have indoors, I don't know what I"m going to do with them. They're under T5 lights, and under saran. They germinated maybe a month or so ago. I think if I took the saran off, the fan (to keep the heat down) would dry them out. And with no fan, the heat would be too much. And there's tons of algae in the container now. I have VFTs in there with them (different pots, in the same main tray). I reckon I should make a thread about that eventually to figure out what I need to do. This is a lot of work!