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Switched to distilled water for my carnivorous plants and saw a difference in 3 weeks
I was using tap water for my venus flytraps and they were looking sad and brown. Read online that the minerals build up and kill them over time. Picked up a gallon of distilled from the grocery store for $1.50 and after 3 weeks the new growth is way greener and the traps are actually closing on bugs now. Anybody else have picky plants that need special water?
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black.oliver3d ago
Seconding the rainwater tip if you can manage it, it's basically free and works just as well as distilled. I had a drosera that was just not doing anything until I switched, and within a month it was covered in dew and catching its own food. One thing I'd add is that you can buy a TDS meter for like $10 on Amazon to check if your tap water is even that bad, some municipal water is actually fine if the TDS is under like 50. But for most people, yeah, distilled or rain is the safest bet for these picky plants, especially long term. Just make sure you're not overwatering either, I killed my first flytrap by keeping the soil soggy even with good water.
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Oh man, my venus flytraps were the same exact way. I had them in tap water for like 4 months and they got all those brown crispy edges on the traps. Switched to rainwater actually because I got a little barrel for free off Facebook marketplace. Took about 2 weeks and I saw new bright green leaves coming up from the center. The old traps never recovered but the new ones are huge and actually snap shut on fungus gnats now. I also have a sundew that went from looking like a dead fuzzy caterpillar to having actual dew drops on it after the switch. Distilled is definitely the way to go if you don't want to mess with collecting rain.
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the_riley4d ago
Blame the tap water all you want but @craig.olivia's plants didn't bounce back for weeks either, and honestly half those brown traps just die off naturally as the plant grows. Ngl, I've kept mine in filtered tap water for two years and they're fine, just don't drown them and let the soil dry between waterings.
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