[b said:
Quote[/b] ]I grow them in a terrarium becuase i live in a high desert area.
Hello joossa-- Where do you live? I live relatively high and dry too, at 4000 ft with very little rain, extremely low humidity, and strong, hot, dry winds.
I grow my VFTs indoors, in a sun room (like a greenhouse attached to the house), and I put groups of them outside for several hours to half a day at a time to catch bugs, and I make sure the wind isn't blowing or I put them in a spot sheltered from the dessicating winds (the wind alone can dry things so fast here in New Mexico, US that it can create mummies of dead bodies, and has done just that on occasion).
I
don't grow anything in a terrarium, including my VFTs. All my plants are in pots exposed to the fresh, circulating air, which forms my chief complaint about terrariums--the enclosed space may concentrate humidity (which VFTs don't really need that much--they happily adapt), but it also may concentrate or accentuate problems, like insect pests and fungal and bacterial microorganisms in the unmoving air and sometimes undrained water. If you
do allow or force air into or through the terrarium, you dramatically reduce the humidity that was the reason (presumably) you placed the plants into the terrarium in the first place.
In short, plants growing in a "display case" may be an attractive idea, or attractive in reality if one can clean the algae that may form in the soil and keep the sides of the terrarium from fogging with condensation and obscuring the view, but terrariums are not necessarily healthy for your plants, and the plants will adapt to a great degree to lower humidity so long as you make sure their medium is always moist (not too wet for too long though--not soggy all the time).
In addition to not being the healthiest way to grow your plants, terrariums make it more difficult for you to maneuver around and tend to them, to trim leaves, to spray orthene or some other insecticide on the undersides of the leaves to kill scale, mealybugs, mites or aphids that wander in decide they like it in your terrarium and begin to raise huge families, to remove plants for transplanting, etc.
If you have already invested in a terrarium, you may want to give it a try. I did the same thing the first time I grew carnivorous plants. But after they all died (an enclosed terrarium, like a greenhouse, can concentrate the heat from sunlight and quickly become an oven in a matter of 15-30 minutes, baking and killing the plants, among other problems a terrarium can cause), I began to grow them in uncovered pots in the open air of the greenhouse with frequent bug-catching expeditions outside instead.
--Just my two bits. Have fun.
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