TerraForums Venus Flytrap, Nepenthes, Drosera and more talk
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I have gotten a few gnats and fed my VFTs. They close up but open back up by the next day without having consumed the gnats. What is the reason for this? Other than that, they are looking good.
Gnats are pretty darn small for a VFT. Unless your trap is tiny, it's probably not enough food for them. Each trap can only eat three times, so they like to make the meal worth while. They will open up again if the critter is too tiny, or if it doesn't really "feel" anything in there. Good luck.
are the gnats dead? because if they are the vft will not know its really food and not a rock or a drop of water that fell into its trap. after the trap is triggered it will close but in order for it to fully close and start digesting the insect inside needs to continuously trigger the hairs inside the leaf to encourage and convince it to fully close. In other words - if an insect is dead the trap won't know its food so it will open again. it needs to be alive and kicking (literally
) so it can reasure the trap whatever fell in there is worth digesting.
There are some people that have other ways of triggering the inside of the trap. I've heard of people using toothpicks or sometimes pressing the leaves together every so often, but i don't know if its effective it is or how exactly they do it. Try catching live food
I use a pair of tweezers - i grab the bug and while still holding the insect with the tweezers stimulate the hairs until they close around the tweezers so the bug doesn't get out, now the bug is free to move around, the VFT will now its dinnertime and will completely close.
If you have to feed it dead stuff you could do the toothpick or the squeezing thing but ask first so you know how to do it correct or risk loosing a leaf
Hmmm, if tghe gnats dissapear from the trap, then it means the food is too small. VFTs let small prey go out of their trap so they dont use energy trying to digest something tiny. Find something bigger!
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