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Does my venus flytrap look healthy?(Pics)

Ive probably owned 10 venus flytraps in my life, every single one died within a month, so I havent owned one in about 5-6 years until i bought this one about 4 months back from a local walmart store. It appears to be doing good what do you think?
here are some pictures of it:
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Every trap on it is new and the ones it had when I first got it have since died off or been trimmed off after catching a fly or two. Again Ive only had it for 4 months, should it have adjusted to the care it's receiving from me by now? or could it still die on me? Ive kept it inside its original plastic pot, and I keep it inside a plastic container that was once a blank cd pack lid, and the pot itself is lifted about an inch on another plastic lid with holes inside the cd container, I water it once a week with purified water until the pot is submerged about an inch into the water(while still ontop of the plastic lid with holes), and then I let the water completely evaporate(takes about a week) before washing the container and filling it up again, so basically the pot is submerged for half a week, and above the water for the second half of the week. This system/cycle seems to be working well. The plant stays outside and recieves about 3 hours of direct sunlight each day from its position(side of my house/backyard). Im pretty happy its doing as well as it appears to be, and this is definitely by far the longest ive kept any carnivorous plant alive. I live in San Diego, CA so the weather here is pretty much the same all year round, and Im wondering how I should go about bringing the plant into dormancy, if it stays alive until winter.

EDIT: keep in mind it was COMPLETELY green when I bought it, and the leaves were thin and weak.
 
You could give that bugger more light to get some color and vigor; and with the changing seasons -- even in "Diego "-- the shorter days and photo-period -- will ensure that dormancy occurs by November. I have friends there who are quite successful with them, year in and year out . . .
 
It looks somewhat healthy, but a bit light-starved. If you can, give it more sunlight, full sun all day if possible. There's no reason to let the water evaporate either. Just water when you feel like it.

Jason
 
It looks pretty healthy to me. Early in the growing season, plants usually don't look much better than that.
 
I find that most Dionaea are light-starved, among the most common reasons for failure, and can always use more sun. Most of my plants -- with the exception of Heterophylla -- are bright red by June in California . . .
 
my stupid dente trap isn't getting any redder. It's traps are basicly green, and it is on a windowsill with a 23 watt bulb above it, although I've heard the bulbs are not as good, but I will be switching to tubes. I think the flytrap looks healthy, it has more red then my dente. :)
 
my stupid dente trap isn't getting any redder. It's traps are basicly green, and it is on a windowsill with a 23 watt bulb above it, although I've heard the bulbs are not as good, but I will be switching to tubes. I think the flytrap looks healthy, it has more red then my dente. :)

It's not that lights aren't as good, it's that they are not good at all. Switching to tubes will not make any difference. Venus flytraps need 100% full sun to be healthy. Your plant will not be happy in the long term.

Jason
 
Expect traps to die back after eating sometimes. And don't call a plant dead after just a month. VFTs aren't really like some hardwood plants that can appear totally dead and then throw up new buds a few months later, but I've had a number of VFTs wither back beneath the soil line only to come back the next Spring looking good as new. If you think yours has died, make sure to unpot it and check. If there are still portions of the leaves and corm intact, you can break them up and treat them as cuttings. (My experience has actually been that VFTs that have died back to the corm tend to yield more plantlets as cuttings than ordinary leaf-pullings.)
~Joe
 
Full sun, as a rule, is a lot easier and better to give since you just put plants outside and let them soak up the intensity (which is by far much greater than any bulb output).

Here are pics of my plants that grow grow indoors under 23 CFs. They're doing just as good, if not better than the ones outside, but I attribute that mostly to plants outside being subject to more stress factors from wind, bugs, changing humidity, etc.

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So yea, it's possible for them to grow inside with bulbs, in my opinion. If you want to get the added benefits of sun without the outside stressors, I would suggest putting them next to a window that gets A LOT of sun.
 
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