Hello bonsaibuddah,

Good idea to put the Dionaea muscipula and Sarracenias outdoors, they like full, bright sun. If you got them from a place that had them in a shaded greenhouse or indoors under flourescent lights, you will need to acclimate them to full sun because ultraviolet light might sunburn them. They need to get a tan first by putting them in a shady spot, like under a tree or awning for a week, then next week in less shade, and the third week you can put them out in full sun. When they are grown indoors or in low light, they loose their ultraviolet tolerance. If they had humidity covers on, you can slowly remove them or punch more and more holes in the cover over the course of two weeks too to acclimate them to lower humidity. The humidity domes make it hard to put plants in full sun because they over heat, basically steaming the plants like in a pressure cooker.

This is my indoor setup, no terrarium, but it might give you some ideas about how to make a terrarium setup if that is the way you want to go.

{{gwi:549700}}

My tropical plants are on the left side with the Nepenthes, growing a much larger pitcher and leaves now, my tropical sundews from Brazil, Asia, Africa, and Australia in the big tray in center, and my North American plants on the right with the flowering Venus flytrap and Sarracenias almost touching the lights. The flytrap will like more light, but I will have to wait until I move to a better place to put it outside. The Sarracenias are just two month old seedlings and can wait a year or two before going outside.

You might ask if you could get some 4 1/2 foot wide free standing shelves with a wide base and sturdy construction to hold your terrarium plants and lights. Hang the lights from the top shelf like I did in mine, then make sure you have enough soil built up in the terrarium and have the lights low enough to be about 5-6 inches from the plant leaves and put the terrarium in the second shelf down. That way you would have a new shelf system to put extra stuff, like books, knick knacks, and plant supplies in.

Make sure the terrarium has good ventilation and drainage, especially if you grow Nepenthes in it.

Have fun with this addictive hobby.

Ok, first off, growing them outside sounds fine, depending on if you have a place that can get full sun and what climate you live in. (so where do ya live in general)

Secondly, I have some shop lights and I set them on top of my tanks. I recently built an expantion to my set up and found that to be the easier of two evils. As long as you use white bulbs and not the colored grow lights, you won't have a problem. (you probably wont have a problem with the grow lights but they are a little hotter so I'm not going to blindly tell you they're fine and then have you burn your house down LOL)

I have some pics of my set up if you want to see them... (I may need an update here or there but I've got pics at least)

Here is a link that might be useful: Aracknight's Deadly Delights