Thinking of starting a carnivorous terrarium

I'd like any ideas or suggestions on how I could do this.. What kinds of plants to put in it.. How to feed them.. Location and lighting needs.. Basically everything that I'd need to know about carnivorous plant care.. I have several aquarium tanks of varying sizes, some of which have cracked glass so I can't use them for fish.. The biggest one, a 35 gallon I believe, has a lighting hood with it.. Thanks in advance..

Jacquie

Also decided I want to use seeds to start my terrarium.. Since I don't have anything to trade right now I'd be willing to send a SASE.. I really like the pictures of the red and purple varieties but I'm not picky either.. = )

Jacquie

I'm hoping you've had a chance to go on the net to do a little poking around so that you realize all Sarracenia and Dionaea are temperate species requiring a domancy so they shouldn't be grown year round in an aquarium.

For you, that leaves Pinguicula and Drosera. Some are temperate (you don't want those) and some are not. You'd want the ones that aren't temperate for an aquarium.

Starting from seed isn't all that hard and there are quite a few threads back here on how to do so but you will have to do a little checking around to bring them up.

I would love to share seed with you but I don't have anything appropriate for your aquarium. A good starter plant would be Drosera capensis. Seed for that should be available on the Internet and I don't think it's all that expensive either but then again the plants aren't all that expensive of that species so poke around and see if perhaps a plant might not be more fun for you.

Yeah, I have been doing as much research as I can.. Still not sure on what types need dormancy and what don't.. But your explanation tells me a lot.. I do actually think I'm going to go with plants after all.. For one reason, I'm in central Florida so it doesn't get very cold here in the winter.. So even if I had the aquarium outside it wouldn't get cold enough for them.. It can get pretty cold here but then the next day it might be in the 70's or even 80's.. I'm sure that would be very confusing for any plant and very stressful on a CP.. So I figure wintering them in the fridge would be best and you can't do that unless they're in a pot.. I've also seen some very nice looking plants on different websites and most of those aren't sold by seed..

The setup I'm thinking of (after much reading) is to put them all in seperate pots and put about an inch or two of water in the bottom of the aquarium.. Maybe raise the ones that don't like boggy conditions just about the water level.. Then fill the tank with sphagnum until just below the rims and then live sphagnum to cover the rims of the plants.. Make the whole think look, at the surface, that it is planted..

Jacquie

Now that sounds like a nice set-up depending on what plants you select.

Here, try this site for basic growing instructions on Drosera-
http://www.dangerousplants.com/grow_sundew.asp