FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

I'm thinking about buying some of those wingless fruit flies I saw at the pet store that they sell for small lizards and amphibians.

That would work. Lots of people use rehydrated freeze-dried blood worms as well. See this article:
Feeding Venus flytraps

So what makes the trap stay shut if you put dead worms in them? If I tried massaging traps *that* small with my fingers, they'd get crushed for sure!

I use the plastic coated heads of quilting pins to massage the heads of my seedlings. Works great!

Leo756 wrote:So what makes the trap stay shut if you put dead worms in them? If I tried massaging traps *that* small with my fingers, they'd get crushed for sure!

I think Francois says to use toothpicks to massage the traps. mnwatson's quilting pins sounds great too. Could maybe use cotton swabs as well?

Matt wrote:That would work. Lots of people use rehydrated freeze-dried blood worms as well. See this article:
Feeding Venus flytraps

Exactly what I was going to say. I do this and my traps love them!! For smaller traps, if you can use your finger you should, just be gentle to not crush them. Tweezers work too but be careful not to puncture or destroy the trap.

Good luck!!


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I've heard that growing your own fruit flies is extremely easy, also if you put them in the fridge for a bit they will slow down and won't go running everywhere making then easy to manipulate into a trap

SFLguy wrote:I've heard that growing your own fruit flies is extremely easy

Yeah, I've decided to try that before buying any wingless ones. I just put some old brown banana peels in a ziploc bag with one corner not completely sealed, and then I put it out on the deck where it will be in the shade and out of the rain. I'm very leery of letting them get loose inside the house since we always have bananas, apples, tomatoes, potatoes and onions lying on the kitchen counter to ripen. I never thought fruit flies would go for onions, but my sister had a horrible mess a while back when they got all over a whole entire case of onions in her restaurant, but she'd gotten rid of all of them before I could catch any to feed to my plants.

And yes, I always put all the bugs I catch in the fridge for a while to knock them out before using tweezers to place them inside the traps or pitchers of my CP's. That way it's more like Mother Nature intended and you don't have to worry with manually massaging the traps to get them to stay shut. When the bugs start warming up and wake back up, they start moving around and trigger the trap to seal. I often hear buzzing sounds coming from the closed traps after a feeding session, and sometimes the traps even start swaying back and forth a bit if there's a particularly big bug squirming around inside, but it's all just part of the food chain! Whenever I catch houseflies that keep landing on me and are being particularly annoying while I'm out on the deck, I always tell them, "Sorry, but you're plant food now, buddy!"

Matt wrote:

Leo756 wrote:So what makes the trap stay shut if you put dead worms in them? If I tried massaging traps *that* small with my fingers, they'd get crushed for sure!

I think Francois says to use toothpicks to massage the traps. mnwatson's quilting pins sounds great too. Could maybe use cotton swabs as well?

Yes, i use moist toothpicks even on tiny seedlings. Just go slowly ang gently. Cotton swabs is a good idea too, i never tried

And you can click on matt's link. Its a good feeding article on a exellent website hehe

Francois