sounds doable to me. I think that the gnats are not much of a problem with larger plants. Mostly it is seedlings that they'll mess up.

Alot of neps have smaller root systems than you'd expect. It sounds pretty normal to me, but then again you didn't say how large it was. If the plant is huge and has no roots...that'd be a different story.

I don't see a problem with LFS and bark.

The growth rate is effected by lots of factor. I'm ticked at mine because of the low levels of sunlight so they're not growing very fast at this time of year, and pitchering is only happening on a few.

It's a very small plant. The small sized ones you get from cobraplant. It was doing well until I did that first re-pot and then it started getting deformed leaf growth and the leaves and pitchers started getting smaller and smaller. I did a big soak awhile back because I had lots of fungus gnats and that seems to have done something. No deformed growth anymore, at least. I just want to see it thrive like my other two are doing. I have an n. maxima and an n. miranda that are medium and large respectively and are doing fantastic. But then, they're still in the original media that they came with! lol Now I'm almost dreading the time I need to re-pot those. Maybe I'll just order the mix that cobraplants sells for nepenthes and hope that does the trick!