FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Hi guys, you might know this, but for those who don’t know. You can feed the tadpoles to any of your carnivorous collection. They are definitely not insects, but they give plenty of nutrients to the plants. Or of course dump them in any body of water. Just thought I make this suggestion to y’all.

P.S. I only do this for my sarracenias and they are growing very very well!!! So I can’t imagine how well they will do for your carnivorous collection, however I would feed each carnivorous plant 1 small -medium sized tadpole or 2-3 tiny tadpoles. The reason why I feed tadpoles to my plants is b/c frogs attract snakes as well as other critters, but frogs like to be near a water source so snakes will like to go where the frogs go too.

I wouldn't do that.

Tad poles aren't insects. What is most likely to happen is the tad pole will rot inside the pitcher and end up killing the pitcher.

Fieldofscreams wrote:I wouldn't do that.

Tad poles aren't insects. What is most likely to happen is the tad pole will rot inside the pitcher and end up killing the pitcher.

Neither are frogs but interestingly they do find themselves eaten by pitchers. And rodents find themselves in nepenthes pitcher plants. Though I do agree don’t feed them abundantly in tadpoles. I’d give them each a small-medium sized tad pole per plant and per week.

You’ll see that even small enough frogs get caught inside s VFT in the YouTube video that I’m about to provide a link to. (Definitely be careful b/c over feeding your plant will stress it and kill it so if you’re uncomfortable with it DO NOT DO IT! Also don’t feed frogs to VFT’s they are too big and take longer to digest! Giving your plant anything other than insects is at your own risk.)


https://www.google.com/search?q=4+deadl ... 75&bih=628

How old are you?

Over feeding VFT's won't hurt them, it's a myth.

Fieldofscreams wrote:How old are you?

Over feeding VFT's won't hurt them, it's a myth.

Why do you want to know my age? As far as my age goes, it’s none of your concern.

How you feed your plants is up to you. All I did was make a suggestion and yes over feeding your plant can kill it b/c it focuses it’s energy on digesting it’s prey and not on growing until all the food is digested and this will also cause stress to the plant and eventually it will die.

I would like to see some evidence.

Fieldofscreams wrote:I would like to see some evidence.

There is no way to convince you unless you do it yourself. That will be your evidence. Although i would still suggest to not overfeed your VFTs. Feeding your VFT 1 bug, 1/3 the size of the trap per plant. Thank you.

Hahaha. Over feeding a flytrap sure sounds fishy to me. I’ve seen my flytraps with all the traps closed digesting bugs on multiple occasions. All it does is make them grow bigger and faster. The traps have evolved to catch and digest prey. How on earth would that take energy away from them when the entire purpose of catching prey is to give them energy?

Most of my traps are closed 100% of the time, been like that since early spring. Once they open they close again in a few minutes with a new bug.

Only adverse effects from it that I've seen is they grow incredibly fast, even their divisions grow crazy fast. That and it's hard to take good pictures of them when the traps are always closed. When I do take pics is when most the traps are open and that is rare and I have to act fast or I'll miss my window. That is about it for adverse effects.

Going back to the tad pole weirdness. Don't do it. Yes there are videos of flytraps catching frogs. But what does that have to do with Sarrs? Completely different plants. The VFT's trap will eventually open and the frog carcass will get rinsed out by the rain and wind. What will rinse or blow out the rotting tadpole carcass from a Sarrs pitcher?

Tadpoles will be perfectly fine in Sarracenia pitchers. Everything that falls into them rots. That’s how they digest prey. It rots and they absorb the nutrients from the rotted corpses. Have you ever cut open a pitcher? Everything inside is rotted and smells horrible. Nothing is ever rinsed or blown out of Sarr pitchers.

About the overfeeding thing, I believe a Venus Flytrap would hypothetically get stress from overfeeding is because it takes energy to digest an insect in order for it to get energy back. So at a certain point it takes too much energy to put into digesting a large amount of insects. However, this is probably only a problem with unhealthy plants. But I have read certain cases where flytraps show visible stress from overfeeding. Here is a link to Barry Rice's FAG on overfeeding a Venus Flytrap http://sarracenia.com/faq/faq2540.html I would take some of what he says with a grain of salt though, because he does often recommend guidelines that a lot of people would disagree with, but he is a naturalist and biologist, and has observed Venus Flytraps plenty of times in the wild.

_-SphagnumFromHell-_ wrote:About the overfeeding thing, I believe a Venus Flytrap would hypothetically get stress from overfeeding is because it takes energy to digest an insect in order for it to get energy back. So at a certain point it takes too much energy to put into digesting a large amount of insects. However, this is probably only a problem with unhealthy plants. But I have read certain cases where flytraps show visible stress from overfeeding. Here is a link to Barry Rice's FAQ on overfeeding a Venus Flytrap http://sarracenia.com/faq/faq2540.html I would take some of what he says with a grain of salt though, because he does often recommend guidelines that a lot of people would disagree with, but he is a naturalist and biologist, and has observed Venus Flytraps plenty of times in the wild.

Honestly that is the same page I found a while back, just did not see the point in arguing anymore. Lol now I will say I do feed my plants anywhere from spring I start feeding 1 leaf per plant, 1-3 leaves per plant during the summer time, back to 1 leaf per plant during the fall when it starts to cool off. During the summer time I feed mine depending on how many open leaves there are and how healthy they look.

KategoricalKarnivore wrote:Tadpoles will be perfectly fine in Sarracenia pitchers. Everything that falls into them rots. That’s how they digest prey. It rots and they absorb the nutrients from the rotted corpses. Have you ever cut open a pitcher? Everything inside is rotted and smells horrible. Nothing is ever rinsed or blown out of Sarr pitchers.

I did not think about it that way. Thank you for sharing this information!

I've been feeding my VFT's since day 1 with tadpoles. I get a newborn size tadpole for the little baby traps and big ones for the big traps. The plant overall loves them. You only get one or two uses out of the trap, but I get 3-4 new leaves everytime. Anything outside the trap after it's sealed will rot that part of the trap from the outside, but you still get extreme growth overall. If you can fit the tail in, perfect. If not, you might want to carefully snip it off. I've had some wriggle out. Buuut, the skin is soft and thin and makes it easier for it to digest and it'll digest everything inside the trap. I don't put any in any of my nepenthes because they have a lot of the baby frogs that grew and left the tadpole pool. Oh, good tip for farming your own tadpoles, colder water keeps them smaller longer so they don't outgrow the trap size too fast lol.

It's like. Yeah, I can bother doing this. Or just fertilize with max sea and use freeze dried blood worms. Even make the blood worms into a foilar spray.

I suppose I've just lost my fun in feeding these things by hand lol. At least since I found out I can just spray and pray.