I've been growing H. ionasi and H. minor for a few months, and I they have not been doing well. There was a day when my radiator wouldn't turn off, which killed many of each of their pitchers, and after that each new one has been smaller. The ionasi was shocked, I guess, into producing adult pitchers, but they were misshapen and each was smaller than the last. Its most recent pitcher was a juvenile pitcher, but it's smaller than any of the juvenile pitchers it arrived with. The minor has only had juvenile pitchers. I thought the issue might be that they didn't have enough light, so I moved them closer to the lights. They reddened some, but the pitchers have still been getting smaller. I was also foliar feeding (way too often--almost every day), but I've washed the substrate and stopped (although I only stopped about a week or two ago). The temperatures in the tank are pretty awful (mid to high eighties during the day, down to mid-seventies at night), but the local temperatures around the heliamphora are much lower, because I cool them with ice packs which I regularly replace. The media is lfs mixed with perlite (not sure the ratio), topped with live sphagnum.
Humidity is high--usually 75% plus, more than 80% at least half the time. However, I keep it up largely by spraying regularly. There's a layer of live sphagnum at the bottom of the tank, along with assorted other plants whose seeds were mixed in, I guess. The heliamphora are elevated above the sphagnum layer--they're sitting on plastic cups.
Is it possible that I just need to wait, continue to water (to wash out the extra fertilizer), and be diligent about ice packs? Or is there something else obviously wrong? I'm a little worried about the media, because the roots of both plants only extend into the live sphagnum.
Humidity is high--usually 75% plus, more than 80% at least half the time. However, I keep it up largely by spraying regularly. There's a layer of live sphagnum at the bottom of the tank, along with assorted other plants whose seeds were mixed in, I guess. The heliamphora are elevated above the sphagnum layer--they're sitting on plastic cups.
Is it possible that I just need to wait, continue to water (to wash out the extra fertilizer), and be diligent about ice packs? Or is there something else obviously wrong? I'm a little worried about the media, because the roots of both plants only extend into the live sphagnum.
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