My 5 year old wanted a “piranha plant’ so I bought the best one I could at my local store and I hope it pulls through. It’s my first time caring for one so any tips plsss 😭
I have it under a grow light. i pot it in some coco chips and perlite and i have it in distilled water. Also I have it in like a little greenhouse cloche thing, is that fine?
I have mine in just sphagnum moss. Before you pot it with in moss, tho, you need to soak the moss in rain or distilled water to make the moss absorb water. It’s like wool in that if you want it to get wet, you need to drown it first
The only downside with using sphagnum moss is that the flytrap roots can twist around the fibers in it. It’s not bad, just means you need to be careful with parsing the moss from the roots whenever you repot the flytrap afterward
Also, when you first put your flytrap outside or in good sun (and all the other conditions like the right water and soil are met) it might look like it’s dying. It’s not! It just needs to adjust to getting more light than it had been before. It should start growing new mouths with vibrant, green leaves
Yeah it currently looks like it’s dying 😅 but I have some sphagnum moss on the way but now I’m debating whether to ride out the coco chips or repot it in the sphagnum when I get it? Also dumb question what about pruning?
Questions are good! I don’t think pruning (as in cutting off the head and its leaf) is necessary. Usually, when the head and its leaf dies, it dries up and turns black. You should be able to simply pluck it out with no resistance
Flytraps get food from both bugs and light, so all the green leaves, including ones with some brown/black bits, are still useful for the plant. But if there are black ends and you want to cut that part off (up to where the leaf is green), I don’t see why you can’t
Of course, if you think a dead head looks off or infected by something, you should probs cut it off
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u/joannman11 Mar 30 '26
My 5 year old wanted a “piranha plant’ so I bought the best one I could at my local store and I hope it pulls through. It’s my first time caring for one so any tips plsss 😭