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Ask questions about how to grow and care for Venus Flytraps

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By TatOZ_2020
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Joined:  Fri Apr 10, 2020 6:34 am
#372245
How to feed him? Have an idea? Now they receive fertilizer 15-5-30 once every two weeks at a concentration of 85-90 ppm. But it seems this is not enough for some. Have pale leaves. This BCP clone aka Galaxy.
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By Supercazzola
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#372246
I have always read never to use fertilizer. If you can not locate actual bugs, you can always get freeze dried blood worms (a larva from a type of fly) and crush that. Then add some water to the crushed freeze dried blood worms to make a small paste. Then you can give some to the trap (not too much or it will form mold and kill the leaf). When feeding non alive food, you will have to manually trigger the trap, and after it closes, gently press and massage from either side to get the trap to seal. If it doesn’t seal, it will not start the digestive process, and would reopen without eating.

Hope someone else more experienced replies to this, but that is what I think is good advice.
By TatOZ_2020
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Joined:  Fri Apr 10, 2020 6:34 am
#372248
Thanks for the answer. But this plant has dysfunctional traps. They do not know how to seal and digest. In this there is a problem.
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By Apollyon
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#372249
I don't measure for ppm but I'll foliar feed the leaves with maxsea 1/2 tsp per gallon up to once a week during the growing season. In the off season I'm doing every 3-4 weeks. It ends up being something like 430ppm using distilled water I use a fine mist bottle though and I don't have runoff when I'm doing it. If you're spraying "liberally" I probably wouldn't do it more than every 2 weeks.
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By idwaneo
Posts:  270
Joined:  Tue Jan 28, 2020 9:47 pm
#372253
By photos uploaded by that BCP clone it has hair triggers which must react to touches and close. The only problem is with sealing, but that happens when the traps already turned 180 deg and developed deformation.

Moon Trap, Angel wings and Galaxy cultivars have the same pattern: when they just opened the traps they don’t have such deformation and can be fed as any other without having problems with incomplete sealing.

Fertilizing flytraps is not even necessary and if not done correctly instead of beneficial it becomes a problem, and mostly it is used by people who got thousands of plants and can’t manually feed. I have myself used and experimented with fertilizer and found the maximum my plants tolerate till developing mineral burn, and believe me they grow as great as a werewolf without food for over 5 years.

The only problem without food is they will grow slower and if any stress happened to plant they hardly or slowly recover. But if in good care they do well as any other common venus flytrap.

And judging by the photo there is nothing pale that can’t be fixed when spring comes naturally.
By TatOZ_2020
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Joined:  Fri Apr 10, 2020 6:34 am
#372256
Thank you. If there were no problems, I would not have asked the question here. This is not the first time I grow plants. There are triggers, it cannot be sealed at all.
By idwaneo
Posts:  270
Joined:  Tue Jan 28, 2020 9:47 pm
#372257
I own such cultivars and they do seal, only new ones seal completely, traps with deformation seal also but leaving some gaps that need human interaction by manually pressing the traps carefully until get almost no gap in the trap.

I recommend to use fingers to press softly without breaking the traps and that will do the trick and get it as much sealed as possible to prevent food to rot by bacteria. I do that in certain cultivars that will not seal completely. There are plenty of them, and feeding is not a problem. Only exceptions are for any cultivar without hair triggers since they won’t close at all and not even digest food if manually closed.
By TatOZ_2020
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Joined:  Fri Apr 10, 2020 6:34 am
#372258
idwaneo wrote: Wed Jan 20, 2021 5:06 pm ...

I recommend to use fingers to press softly without breaking the traps and that will do the trick and get it as much sealed as possible to prevent food to rot by bacteria. I do that in certain cultivars that will not seal completely. There are plenty of them, and feeding is not a problem. Only exceptions are for any cultivar without hair triggers since they won’t close at all and not even digest food if manually closed.
Thanks for the advice. But it doesn't work in this case. This is verified. With others, yes. With this, no. The insect remains undigested. The traps are then deformed.
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By idwaneo
Posts:  270
Joined:  Tue Jan 28, 2020 9:47 pm
#372260
I understood your point, and I insist that feeding traps that are fully deformed closing will be difficult and will need human skill to make the trap to close uniformly and can even result in breaking it.

My simple solution: Feed only new traps that haven’t yet obtained such deformation and those are the new ones after they just opened.

Don’t complicate your life, pick the newest trap and feed only that one until it dies. Then repeat with other. Never use already a deformed trap or you will get the same problem over and over and just ruin the nice looking of those 180 deg traps :roll:
Last edited by idwaneo on Wed Jan 20, 2021 5:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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By idwaneo
Posts:  270
Joined:  Tue Jan 28, 2020 9:47 pm
#372264
You need to aim for the traps after 2-3 days they opened. They can’t have such deformation after opening it takes some time. The ones you picked already not so fresh as they already got some deformation. So means they are some weeks old
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By idwaneo
Posts:  270
Joined:  Tue Jan 28, 2020 9:47 pm
#372265
Also sometimes this cultivar may produce close to common traps with barely any deformation that you may use as advantage and feed.

Also I have noticed that those fed traps will not get so deformed as a non fed one and as result to use it for few feedings.

PS: if a trap opening is no more than 30 degrees it doesn’t mean that you can’t feed or even close. They react and can be feed. Just give it a try
By TatOZ_2020
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Joined:  Fri Apr 10, 2020 6:34 am
#372266
Traps without deformation before feeding. Very young. They opened up so ugly just after the unfinished meal. It does not make simple traps.
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By idwaneo
Posts:  270
Joined:  Tue Jan 28, 2020 9:47 pm
#372267
Probably it was not digested from not enough motion to trap. It has happened to me sometimes but that doesn’t mean the trap can’t eat.

Just try and keep the motion every 5 seconds to different parts of the trap for a period of 30 seconds. And if possible try again after one hour to make sure it will seal.

Unfortunately I already removed all dead traps of this flytrap cultivar which I fed and had digested food with them. Usually they open in 2 weeks by the amount of food given by me
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