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Crickets

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Today, I'm thinking about bying some crickets to feed my nepenthes and sundews. What size crickets should I get? And do I need to freeze or refrigerate them?
 
Don't feed your sundews crickets! Any size crickets (even pinheads) are probably too large for any sundews. Small flightless fruitflies are the largest I would go with. Drosophilla melanogaster is the tiniest commercially available species. Next is D. heydei with red eyes is larger and will not get trapped by sundews-at least not mine only stuck for a while but they will eventually escape. Reptile shops sell these flightless varieties.

For the Neps I would start with 2 week old crickets (up to 2 times the size of a housefly) for your nepenthes unless you've got some with big pitchers. Several of my Neps have 4-5" pitchers and these are the size I've started using. So long as the food is completely submerged in the pitcher fluid you should be OK. I wouldn't use adult size crickets til my plants have 8" + pitchers.

As for storing them. You can either breed your own crickets in a 10 gallon fishtank (if you have someplace they can live and "creek" without disturbing you) or you can simply buy a sack of crickets bring them home and let them freeze to death in the freezer and store them there then use them whenever you need them. That's what I'm doing cos I hate insects (other than praying mantids). On this website they sell cans of crickets. I've never tried them but I presume these can be stored like fish food with a lid and anywhere that's dry. If you do put crickets in the freezer be kind and tell the people you live with what's in the certain bag so they don't get a surprise when rummaging for a snack!
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I occasionaly fed houseflies to my sunews. I'd probably feed small crickets to my forked sundews, and my cape sundew. That should be okay right
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? As for nepenthes, I have two species with 8"+ pitchers, and the rest have 4"+ pitchers. I think I'll get the smaller crickets, and feed more to larger plants, and less to smaller plants.
 
Didn't you have problems with the corpses becoming fuzzy with fungus on those sundews (and then loosing the leaf)? Anytime I feed anything to my sundews or pings the food develops fungus but if I allow the plants to catch their own food by leaving the terrarium open for an hour or so a week they get tiny gnats and never get fungus... it's weird!

Yes, go slow with feeding the plants if they digest their previous meal and the the pitchers look in good shape You can probably add more later with no disasters. I haven't added more than one meal per pitcher though, for fear of rotting them. If the pitcher looks to be in decline at all/not making nectar) don't feed it, I've lost some old but nice looking pitchers this way! Usually the pitchers that are on the plant when I get it.
 
It's odd. The room I grow my plants in is like, fungal free. I haven't had any problems with fungus, even though it is warm an really humid. But, my larger sundews seem to like house flies. I'll probably experiment on one pitcher for every species of nepenthes I have for feeding. I just haveto make sure the digestive juices completely cover their meal.
 
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