FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

What insects do you think and would recommend to feed to Venus flytraps?

How big is it? It should be put outside and it can catch its own food. If you MUST feed it, you can swat a fly, stun it, throw it in a trap and hope that it wakes up to stimulate the trap to seal and digest it. Or lightly press the sides of the trap together once a second for about a minute.

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This is the plants first trap and I want to know what kinds of insects are best for traps to eat and easy to catch that are good for the plant.

my plants are outdoors and catch a lot of their own bugs out there I feed 1-2 traps per week on each plant with dried blood worms (dehydrated and rolled up into lil snacks)

I can't back it up with the science and numbers of the nitrogen content by any means but a lot of growers here seem to do it/have good results

I can say I had one working trap on a hardware store plant in rough shape once it had settled in for a couple weeks... I fed it the rehydrated blood worms once, and within a week a new shoot was starting to come up, each day it inched up and right after it another...now another...

other than that bugs that eat other bugs tend to be considered "better" as far as nitrogen levels as opposed to bugs that eat plant materials. also anything with a hard exoskeleton might not give out as much nutrients (beetles, ants, etc)

You shouldn't need to feed it if your plant is outdoors. As already said they don't need much (any) bugs to survive. Generally creepy crawly insects have more nitrogen such as spiders and such but flys and wasps do quite well also. My plants honestly catch more spiders than flys.

Branmuffin wrote:You shouldn't need to feed it if your plant is outdoors. As already said they don't need much (any) bugs to survive. Generally creepy crawly insects have more nitrogen such as spiders and such but flys and wasps do quite well also. My plants honestly catch more spiders than flys.

My plants have never caught anything other than a fly lol. Flies are an abundance in my backyard though, i live in farm country plus I have a compost barrel out back. Haha.

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Bloodworms are good

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Thank you all for your tips but the trap is to small to fit a normal sized fly so i need a smaller prey item.

Get some freeze dried bloodworms, use a coffee grinder and grind it into a powder. Take a tiny bit and add 1 drop of distilled water to it. Mix it with a toothpick until the powder absorbs the water. If there is excess water, add a bit more bloodworm powder until its a paste. Use the toothpick and take a piece no bigger than 1/3 the trap size and feed that to the trap.

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Is it true that the trap needs the thing to move to activate digestion as the instructions say that if the trap closes and the acid reacts to it it will digest it

it is true the trap "seals" from the struggling prey to simulate this you can gently squeeze the outside of the trap after it closes, I'll gentle massage for a minute or so just be gentle then I'll move to a different plant and go back to the previous and give them another lil squeeze or two, by the time I've done the 8 or so plants that are feeding in a cycle making sure they are "sealed" off they go.

usually a minute or so should be sufficient though! the dried bloodworms way is an easy way to feed very small traps

Dont feed it at all, it'll catch its own food

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I put it on my table to feed it and the trap shut it self...will it be fine and if so how long till it will reopen?

Shutting the trap expends energy, so it's best to not trigger the traps without food inside if you can avoid it, but it shouldn't hurt a healthy plant. The trap should open in a few hours.

If the plant literally only has one trap, you should wait to feed it until it has at least 3.

Thank you as I didn't know wether or not this would hurt the plant but the instructions from the kit said to feed the plant the second it grows a trap to boost growth.