What to feed carniverous plants?

[Kane65]

My wife gave me some carniverous plants. I put them in my FBT tank but that was a very bad idea. They just got trampled on. I figured in there they'd get their share of small crickets. Anyway, I have the plants by themselves and I'm not sure how most people feed them. I keep wax worms, small crickets, meal worms and superworms around the house for various herps. Will any of these work ok? The plants are:

Several Venus Fly Traps
Several Pitcher Plants
One Butterwort... is it butterwort? The one with the sticky leaves.

[geckoguy157]

most people dont bother feeding them

[YummyCdnMale]

Very interesting post! .. most people have never even seen them let alone know how to care for them. Something i would be interested looking into now. I'll post if i find anything Kane
P.S i think your wife may be trying to "off" you lol

[lostwithin]

Hey, When I kept Venus fly traps, I would feed them appropriate sized crickets. With there back legs pulled off. (Crickets are very strong; you may be better off killing them then feeing them. I have heard small bits of lean hamburger, but it is too high in fat and causes problems with the plant. super worms are too large but meal worms should work fine as well. Are you keeping the Venus fly traps in an aquarium ?? I found mine did best in an aquarium with VERY high humidity.

Good luck, all carnivorous plants are interesting but Venus Fly traps are my favorite.


Do not feed them too much 1 or 2 crickets a week is plenty. Too much will kill them, you can do a search for more info on them .

YummyCdnMale, Venus fly traps have become quite popular, for the past year or so I have seen them everywhere, any plant section in any store normally has them . At least in New Brunswick they do.

Devon

[guapote's gape]

alot of the pet stores can get a product I beleive from Tetra called Vitafly. It's actullay dried flies. Kwept a fairly large collection of carnivorous plants many years ago and this definetly helped out durring the cooler months. I also see several dried insect products in the reptile sections of many stores. Not the best option for your reptiles but great for the plants.
Please bear in mind that these plants actually need very little in way of feeding to survive.

[Kane65]

Right now I'm keeping them in a small, fully sealed terrarium. I'll put together a bigger one once I nurse them back to health. The plants (fly-trap, sundew & cobra lily) are really hurting from being trampled by FBTs. The cobra lilys may not make it.

[PDDM]

Kane...kinda out in the left field here but are you a WWE fan(if you are im assuming you like the wrestler kane whos my fave hope he beats benoit at bad blood:D)

[Kane65]

Originally posted by PDDM
Kane...kinda out in the left field here but are you a WWE fan(if you are im assuming you like the wrestler kane whos my fave hope he beats benoit at bad blood:D)

Hmm, no sorry. Karl Edward Wagner wrote a series of books about a character named Kane. Read them when I was a kid and have been hooked on em since.

[proud2bcanadian]

Does anyone know where I can buy Venus Fly Traps or Pitcher Plants in the GTA?

Thanks,

[Kyle Barker]

i have killed a few pitchers by feeding crickets. probably either too big or more jumped in and became too many. anyway i wasnt carefull and they caused th eplant to rot.

[Matt_K]

Originally posted by proud2bcanadian
Does anyone know where I can buy Venus Fly Traps or Pitcher Plants in the GTA?

Thanks,

PCPC has them from time to time and we also usually have them at the shows..

I also believe that Home Depot is carrying them now.. But they're expensive there..

[proud2bcanadian]

Thanks Matt!

[beaubarger]

the biggest thing I know about them is that if you feed them alot they will die......I was surprised when I read that they get most of their energy and carbon from photsynthesis, they do LOVE HUMIDITY, so use a sprayer in the tank or vaporizer......now on the same token the roots are VERY sensitive to water, I assume you did a false bottom or are at least kepping watering to a minimum, they get root rot very easily and will die quickly from it...
GOOD LUCK with your carn plants....
You know its interesting these Venus fly traps and etc. remind me alot of Corals (from the reef) they do eat meat and in the corals case Plankton (zoo and phyto) and they do so only about once a week, but rely mostly on specific spectrums of light, very interesting. I wonder if there is any link from coral and Carn plants? Furthermore if you study the evolutionary process the plants all around us are more efficient than that they can rely solely upon light souce nutrients (in soil) and water. Curious if all comes from the sea as in "Darwin" theory if these are somehow just a "LAND CORAL"?.......neat when you think about it......huh?

[thunder]

venus fly traps do not actually eat the insects they trap, as they receive no energy from them. they actually use them only for minerals. i feed mine rolly polly bugs (pill or sow bugs) that i find in my yard, and house flies. do not feed them live crickets or mealworms, as these insects can eat their way out of the plant, causing its death.

[thunder]

oh, and corals are not actually plants. they are huge colonies of tiny animals all stuck together. in terms of evolution, not all carnivorous plants are closely related. the phenomena of the "carnivorous" plant is one that has cropped up several times from different ancestors, a case of paralell or convergent evolution. an excellant example of paralell evolution would be the etb and gtp, not very closely related but extremely similar. this happens when two unrelated species face similar conditions, and adapt the same mechanisms to cope. in the case of carnivorous plants, you will find that most of them come from regions with mineral poor soil, particularly in marshy or swampy areas. they "eat" insects to obtain the minerals that they lack.

[CamHanna]

I have always fed mine flies. In the spring my house is flooded with them so get out a butterfly net and fit it to the end of the vaccuum. I suck up a years worth of flies, bag them, and throw them in the freezer. It's free and it gets the flies out of my windows.