New Terrarium Questions

[dzongos]

I want to begin by saying hi to everyone. What a great forum.

I have a couple of questions.

I have always loved plants and always had a fascination with venus fly traps. I was looking for one forever... I finally found one at wal-mart. Most of them were dead, but this one was half decent. So I bought it. When I got home I began searching the internet trying to find out how to take care of them. I started reading about terrariums and thought it would be really neat to get a small aquarium and start my own.

I started reading about all the different ways of creating one. I went to the local pet store and bought a 10 gallon aquarium with a light and cut me a piece of plexy glass to put on top. Once I did this I read to put rocks or terra-lite at the bottom. I put rocks to begin with for my current venus fly traps so they wouldnt die. I put about 1 inch of rocks and about 3 inches of dirt. The dirt is peat moss and perlite. I ordered a hygrometer and a thermometer along with some terra-lite and a package of 4 different plants. Once I got them in I changed the rocks out with the terra-lite and only put about 1 inch of dirt. Also in between the dirt and the terra-lite I have a screen I cutout to fit inside the aquarium.

From reading each plant requires its own types of dirt. I have 3 venus fly traps, a pitcher plant and a sundew. I have them all in there right now.

My questions are..

With the light on about 16 hours a day I see 90+% humidity and it stays at about 76 degrees. Is this okay for these plants?

The walls of the tank stay covered with a film of water from the moisture, should it be sealed completely or should it have a place to breathe?

Most of the sites I see telling you how to build one say the light should be 5-7 inches from the plants, should I build the dirt up so they are 5-7 inches from the light? Right now they are about 10 inches from the light, maybe more.

I just really want a small one for now to learn and make sure I dont kill the plants. I do eventually want a 100 gallon+ tank with alot more things in it, but I guess you have to start small.

Any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!

[Agrippa]

Welcome to The Planted Tank:

First off, the specific care of each of your plants depends entirely upon the species, because there are both tropical and temperate sundews and pitchers. Depending upon their area of origination, some carnivorous plants actually tend to do poorly in captivity.

It sounds like you are off to a good start, but there are a few things that you should consider:
-First, what wattage is your light? For most of the pitcher and sundew species, you really need around 30w (or more, for best colour,) of light over the vivarium.
-Unfortunately, Dionaea are actually a temperate plant, which means that they need to go through a process of diminishing light and temperature to initiate hibernation. Unfortunately, this makes them rather notoriously difficult to maintain in captivity, as without this "rest," these plants only tend to live 2 or 3 years.
-It's sometimes difficult to maintain several species of carnivorous plants together, because of their varying requirements for humidity, light level, soil preference, and water uptake; however, don't let this distress you too much:

Quite a few tropical species of nepenthese, utricularia, drosera, and pingicula (not to mention some more exotic genuses,) grow quite successfully in vivaria. With a little tweaking of the environment (hardscape to provide some plants with shade, etc,) strategic manipulation of the soil (for drainage and acidity, depending upon the plant,) and some other planning, you can have a beautiful mixed community.

I really advise that you visit: http://www.cobraplant.com/caresheets.html for basic information on many species of carnivorous plants. It'd also be a great idea to see if you can find forums specifically catered to carnivorous plants, and find what processes they follow to successfully maintain these rather unique environments (as it's been a couple of years since my roommate killed my carnivorous plant vivarium... )

Good luck, and please keep us updated!