Thank you so much for your passionate answers!
I found them very helpful.

Your plants (and pictures too) also look absolutely beautiful!
It’s always a pleasure to see people like you, who are so enthusiastic about niche hobbies, showing or explaining me stuff.

I wanna see more of that. Please do a few posts about your collection in this community, I would probably not be the only one wanting to see it!

I find carnivorous plants very fascinating. Especially their metabolism and environmental conditions they withstand (or: need and thrive). It would be so cool if more people had these amazing plants, especially in how easy they are to care for in theory!

Thank you for your elaborate response!

I’m not sure what the intention of the leca is but I don’t generally use it unless for aroids that want more airflow for their roots.

I have all of my plants (calathea, weed, doesn’t matter) in hydroculture, with the only exception being the Drosera. I’ve noticed that some CPs really need moss (or peat, as long as it exchanges ions to acid), while some other do well in just soilless media and are more forgiving, like my nepenthes.

If you’re a carnivorous plant nerd, I can show you my learnings if you’re interested, maybe you’ll learn something new.

LECA is completely inert (especially if soaked multiple times in pure water) and doesn’t compact, so you don’t need to repot for years. Many CPs don’t care about the substrate at all, as long as it doesn’t have too many nutrients, and LECA is great for that, because it’s airy and doesn’t compact, opposed to moss or peat, and won’t attract pests.
Watering is also way easier.

I don’t use any ferts for my carnivores but I know foliar feeding is becoming more popular and root feeding seems to be ok for some sars but I haven’t taken that plunge myself.

I lightly fertilize them from time to time, mainly foliar feeding, but I’ve decided to stop that due to the risks you mentioned.
I think if they are hungry, they’ll catch their own prey.

They may still suffer and old leaves may die but look out for any new growth and what that looks like

It’s my first time growing CPs. Is it possible that the ping got more and longer light hours, and therefore changed from the winter succulent to the summer phase? Do the succulent leaves die when summer arrives? Because the newer ones look more spoon shaped.

I soaked and flushed the LECA multiple times. It showed no minerals left with my EC meter.

From what I’ve heard, pings do well in mineralic mixes like pumice, so LECA shouldn’t be much of a problem. It looked pretty good for the last few weeks, but suddenly not anymore…

Calathea (Beauty Star) and Maranta leuconora (Lemon lime)

Does this count too?

I already posted this on !balconygardening@slrpnk.net. .

I’m purposefully growing duckweed on my balcony.
I’m doing !hydroponics@slrpnk.net, and by doing that, I have lots of waste water with still good fertilizer in it.

Duckweed is one of the fastest growing, nutrient densest and least demanding plant out there, and you can just scoop it out with a strainer.

It’s exponentially growing and if you don’t wanna eat it, it makes great organic fertiliser or animal feed with lots of protein and micronutients!

That’s the spirit! The best way to learn something new is often to break it first, and then to fix it and see how it works underneath.

I’m baffled. Thank you so much!

It’s way too rare seeing people complimenting each other, and sometimes/ often it feels like most of my effort is just wasted.

Rarely, I receive compliments like these. But, very often, just at the right moment.

Thank you stranger 💚

You damaged remaining roots and put it under a grow light. This caused severe dehydration.

It’s hard to say if you can still save it. But with these steps, you might:

• Place it under a humidity dome (or plastic bag) and mist the dome, not the plant, regularly with distilled water. This allows the plant to breathe again without dehydrating it further.
• Decide what setup you want to use. And then stick with it. Every repotting it highly stressful.
  Since you said semi hydro, do you want to use a submerged setup, or something else? Submerged is best with LECA or bigger pumice rocks.
  Pon or perlite wicks too much when standing in nutrient solution, which will keep the surface constantly wet and causes a toxic fertilizer crust to form, plus algae and mold.
  I also had the experience that they are not aerated enough and I had to struggle with root rot. They require different setups, e.g. Lechuza pots or wicking pots, plus dry periods.
  I personally strongly prefer LECA for myself and my setup.
• You can make use of foliar feeding with highly diluted fertilizer in a spray bottle if you want later. The plant will cannibalize itself to form new roots, and spraying it aids to prevent that. Only do this if you have experience. Same with hormones. Auxins may help, but again, not essential and better used with caution.
• Place it into lower light. The root formation doesn’t take lots of light.
• Keep the media moist, but not wet.

All of that is a huge pain. That’s why I always try to get cuttings of plants I want first and then, as a second choice, convert it into hydro.

Thanks! <3

I’ve never had to fight any pests indoors, besides some aphids maybe.

They are all extremely easy to manage in my experience, and I guess most of my plants are strong enough to fight for themselves.

Those that were affected by pests were also the ones that were already struggling somewhere else (e.g. nutritional deficiency)

I have a lot of windows in my room, they’ll get enough light from all sides around :D

The mosaic doesn’t filter a lot of light, but I’ll see. It’s still pretty new.

CasaOS isn’t an OS, it’s just the web interface you install afterwards you have Debian or whatever running

I can recommend you Debian, since it’s the “default” for many servers and has a lot of documentation and an extremely big userbase.

For web interfaces, I can recommend you, as you already mentioned, CasaOS and Cockpit.

I used CasaOS in the beginning and liked it, but nowadays, I mostly use Cockpit, where I have the feeling that it integrates the host system more, and allows me to do most of my maintenance (updating, etc.) quite easily.

I wouldn’t recommend it tbh.

Transitioning plants, especially calatheas and such, from soil to hydro is very very veeery annoying.

You have to get every little last bit of dirt off, or else everything rots away.

This process can be quite challenging for many plants, and I would advise anyone without expertise to not bother, or else you’re up to a lot of frustration.

You can easily get a few cuttings of the Maranta leuconora if you want.
Proplifting is the term you’ll want to search for ;)
They can be very easily propagated via cuttings, opposed to Calatheas which can only be done via root splitting

My “secret tip” is having them in semi-hydro (passive hydroponics with LECA).

The claim that they’ll need 60+% RH is wrong in my experience, they “only” need the absolute perfect balance between having a substrate that’s too wet (rotting risk) and too dry (wilting and burnt leaves).

Also, tap water is very bad for them, even here in Germany with extremely high standards (no chlorine or fluorine, etc.).

My nutrient solution is made with a full nutrient fertilizer and pure water (osmosis or rain), so there’s no bad stuff (carbonates, etc.) in there. They react very badly to those things.

My collection is less than a year old, most of them not even a few months. They’ve been growing like weeds, even in winter!

You can check out !hydroponics@slrpnk.net for more information about hydro in general if you’re interested.

I’ve already explained this technique, but sadly only on !gruenerdaumen@feddit.org in German.
I’ve also found a schematic, but also in German.

It’s a passive and very simple hydroponic system, where the pots stand 1/3 in nutrient solution, and it gets wicked up by expanded clay balls.

It provides absolutely ideal conditions for plants (extremely well aerated, perfect nutrients, etc.), but not for pests, and I only have to water once in about two weeks.

Thanks! That was very helpful!

Hahaha, no thanks 😁 I already have too many of those. The Maranta spreads in my house like weeds.

But yeah, you’re right! What works even better imo is to stick it into LECA instead of water, which keeps everything moist and aerated, and prevents rotting issues

The idea is following: Let’s say the fertilizer tells you to use it once a month, so you currently add a big amount (the recommendation on the label) at once, and water the rest only with plain water weekly for example.

This creates a lot of stress, and the plant has to use it up completely until you dose again in 4 weeks.

Instead, you fertilize with 1/4 every time, but water your plant 4 times a month, which spreads it out better. Continuous feeding doesn’t dehydrate the roots as much.

Also, don’t forget to discard the leftover nutrient solution every few weeks or months, since it contains lots of waste.

Fertilizer could very well be an issue, I don’t really have any idea how much fertilizer my plants need and just give them a all a bit biannually (usually in the fall and spring).

Then that’s the problem. You don’t “fertilize” with LECA, you add the nutrients to the water every time, giving you more consistent conditions.

If you only add fertilizer from time to time, you’ll get a huge amount of it instantly, too much.

Try using 1/4 strength for the darker season, and 1/2 strength in growing season to every irrigation water, and remember to flush it from time to time, around every or every second month, depending on how much it grew.

Remember to use a fertilizer that also has micronutrients, preferably one that’s made for hydro. The best option would be to use a two part fertilizer with rain water.

I see that the plants are growing in LECA. Is that new for them? Did you transition them to hydro? If so, how long ago?

For me, it looks like a problem with the roots. I’d say either root rot or too much fertilizer.

They don’t look sunburnt imo