Feeding my Neps today

[swords]

I'm going to feed all my Neps today some defrosted bloodworms (midge larvae) and I was wondering If I should feed my 3 newest arrivals: Fusca, Lowii and Hamata? I'm not sure how long I've had them (Tony has it been a month yet?) but I was wondering if I should drop a tiny worm or two into these guys or let them alone for a few more weeks? I don't know if they would feed off the food or it would just rot due to them still being in shock from being repotted.
Whatta y'all think?

 

[nepenthes gracilis]

Speakign of feeding I just got my Lowii,Hamata and Gracilis "Nigrapurpurea" from Tony yesturday and just fed them today about 20 minutes ago.

What a strange coincidence! But Tony told me to go on ahead and fed them well, I just fed all of my new Neps:

Hamata: 1 cricket,3 red ants and 3 sweet ants.

Lowii: 1 cricket,3 red ants and 1 wood ant and 3 sweet ants.

Gracilis Nigrapurpurea: 2 red ants and 2 swet ants.

So yeah go on and feed them! My Hamata readily gobbled up my offerings to it.

 

[swords]

How are you catching the ants & crickets? Do you kill them before you put them in or do you just unleash the insects in the terrarium?

My hamata was a "3" size with about 3" tall pitchers, are you using adult crickets or 2 week olds?

 

[nepenthes gracilis]

For the ants go look under any rock on or any sidewalk or perhaps in your driveway and I personally just poke them with my finger til they are crippled and curl up or walk around in circles with smashed body parts, then I pick them up and into a plastic cup they go. For Crckets I look under most any rock and try to get the real small ones, 2week old and I did feed my Hamata with a slightly larger cricket older than 2 weeks but not mature yet and he died intantaneously. But yeah on the averqage 2 week olds are the primary prefered by me. Also, I simply hand feed my plants, I prefer it, I mean I know they are very well equiped to catch thier own food but uh......my terrarium at the bottom is full of about 5 inches of water below the grid my potted Neps sit on. See what I mean, so if I didn't hand fed them crawling insects they would drown in the water, but yes I do let them catch flies and bees if I happen to stun one (bees primarily) But flies I just toss them in if I can find one in the house. But if ANY insect is stunned mostly a fliwer I will palce it in the palnts pot near an active pitcher, usualy the insect wants to look for food to help it recover and then it sees the delicous nectar at the pitcher then whoop the palnt feds itself. But this is why I hand feed my nepenthes in the Highland terrarium, lowland terrarium I feed by hand too.

See the bubbles in the water form the airstone? That's why I hand feed my Neps in terrariums. Lots of water, but TONS of humidity too!  

 

[swords]

That's what I do for humidity too. Only instead of wire shelving I use eggcrate and 1 1/4" PVC pipe sections laid on it's side with the eggcrate ontop.  I haven't tried an airstone as the water simply evaporates on it's own. I do lay tinfoil beneath the tank-perhaps the reflectivity of light aids in evaporation?

I just fed all the neps in the house with feedable pitchers. Outside they're catching "real" food so I'm leaving them be. I used a chunk of bloodworm melted in a 1/6th of a cup of R/O water and a glass eyedropper (smaller than the larger graduated plastic ones).

How often do you feed them? I mainly just water the pots with aquarium water every few weeks and flush the pots with R/O. I'll bet they'll really grow if I start feeding them regularly-I'm just worried about overfeeding. I tried to put 2-3 bloodworms (1/4" long and 1/16th" wide) in each active pitcher. They are red with heimoglobin (and cause my fish to breed) so hopefully they'll be good for Nepenthes too. I believe they are mosquito larvae...

 

[nepenthes gracilis]

Your food sounds fine. I feed my Neps quite often, this month I have fed them about 2 times already yeah about 2 times so far definetly. So in 1 month I feed them about 4-5 times. And they all grow like weeds.

That's a good thing!

Could you get me a picture of your grating thing setup? I am a bit confused how you have it setup and put together in your terrarium. Thanks!

 

[PlantAKiss]

Uh...Nep G....what the H is a "sweet ant"

Have you tasted them?

Suzanne

 

[Tony Paroubek]

Frequent small feedings is preferential as you don't overload the pitcher that way. The only thing to watch is with new plants if you have replaced the fluid with water. There is a higher chance of mold from overfeeding as the fluid is lacking acid and enzymes to really break the food down quickly.

It has been my experience that Nepenthes really respond well to feeding. You may not see the results for a month or so, but all of a sudden the new leaf will be huge!
Tony

 

[nepenthes gracilis]

This may be a bit disturbing but maby you also know them as piss ants. They are the little ants that are like the size 2-3 pin heads and run all over the sidewalk. They are known more commonly as sweet ants as they are commonly found around spilled soda drinks and sweet stuff. But they are know as the latter because they can be found around alot of foul things too, like rotten vegatables,old fruit,and well as thier name implies! If this offends anyone I am just telling you the ants 2 names it has been given.

 

[mindmaze128]

I was reading though Neps of borneo (very good book) today and it seems to me that you might want to feed your plants lots of small insects as opposed to a few big insects. Smaller insects are easier to digest than bigger ones, so there is less of a chance that the pitcher will die. For those of you that have the book, I'm thinking of the bicalcarata case study graphs of the NH3 concentration vs time. I think that the best food for neps would have to be ants and fruit flies since they are fairly plentiful and small.

Just an idea.

Joel

 

[Parasuco]

The thing with ants though is that they are almost all chitin... Theres not loads of nutrition in htere, is there?

The thing I like with ants, is you cripple them, putthem on the pitcher, and by the time they're done fixing their legs, they forget that they are scared, so they go up to the peristome, and start lapping up the nectar, and you get to see just how the ants really get caught. Very interesting to watch...

 

[nepenthes gracilis]

Yes, but chitin does have some amount of protein and calcium in it. So the plant will benfit from only ants but that is why I add the small crickets for small plants too, for larger palnt liek N.Truncata I will throw in 2 mature big crickets along with a dozen or so live carpenter ants. So the plant will obtain nutrients form ant's that aren't in crickets and nurtrient's from cricket's that aren't in ants.

 

[mindmaze128]

Actually parasuco, a very high percentage of what Nep pitchers catch are ants. Case study 3 in Neps of borneo shows that close to 90% of the prey found in lower pitchers of n raff are ants, compared to 60% of the total prey in upper pitchers. I guess putting bigger insects isn't such a bad thing, but considering that most of the natural prey in nep pitchers are ants, I think it would be best to mimic what they experience in the wild. Just a thought...

Joel

 

[RaW$VENUS.FLY.TRAP.beginner]

this might be sort of off topic
but have you wondered why so many ants go in there ?
i sort of think of it as a dead ant (end) hehe
they leave their traisl behind, their buddies follow wme
and before its too late they cant get out either ehehe

 

[swords]

"Sugar ants" is what they call em here. When I was a kid my neighborhood pals and I used to lay a strip of caps over an ant and stike the cap with a sharp rock and set the poor guys on fire!

(sick kids I know...)

I just don't want to end up with a "pile" of bugs in the pitchers and the plants start smelling bad. I guess worms ought to just disintergrate anyway as they shouldn't have a chitinous exoskeleton like a cricket or mantis.

Here's one of my 29G lowland tanks overview
<image src="http://the-natural-aquarium.com/29lowland-1-7.02.jpg">

pictured L-R are: truncata, ventricosa (F), X Morgana (B), alata(F), X Judith Finn (B) and bicalcarata

Here's a close up of the false bottom (in another tank in which I used larger PVC piping).:
<image src="http://the-natural-aquarium.com/falsebottom.jpg">
that IS a D adelae plantlet growing in a clump of java moss in the water portion!

I've also made false bottoms that will allow me to hold like 3" of water under the plants but I haven't found any problems with humidity by having a shallower water pool and it give me increased vertical growing room. Humidity in these tanks runs about 85%+ at all times-had to wipe the glass to take the photos! I pack as much flourescent light on as I can (29 Gallon tank is 30" long so I use 4x 20 watt tubes and surround the tank on 5 sides with tinfoil to make a nice "light box". the crimson flushes on my alata pitchers shows me that he's happy with it!

 

[swords]

Anybody try keeping a "antfarm" as a source of food for their Nepenthes? The only thing I would fear is loose ants all over the house!

 

[nepenthes gracilis]

I just got an AWESOME idea. I can take all the water out tommorow and replace it with pur livign SPahngum! THat woudl really up humdity!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That's what I'll do! It'll look soo cool! Wait'll you all see it tommorow afternoon sometime when I am finished! hehehehehehe!

RAW, so many ants go into Nepenthes pitchers because well, ants are attracted to the nectar secretions!

Josh, that is a good idea but you must obatain a queen to keep the process going, other wise the worker population will just drop fast as they'll all be going for Nep. food!

 

[swords]

Take my advice-put that sphagnum on top of the grate not under it! Sphagum sitting in water gets to stinkin!  I just dug out my 75 gallon (beautiful tank evolved for 4+ months all kinds of neat tropical plants) because the spahgnum planting mounds became anoxic and stunk to high heaven!  

 my neighbor even yelled at me for throwing 5 x 5gallon pails of stinking sphagnum in the dumpster!  

Anyway, put the sphagnum on TOP of your false bottom and let the water still be under it, if you want to put some living stuff in the water get some java moss from a fish shop - that will help keep the water clean and fresh. Sphagnum just starts to stink if it stays submerged for too long but up on the grate where extra water can drip off it should get enough water and air circ to  come back to life and not be a big stinky black mess!

 

[nepenthes gracilis]

I think i remember Sphagnum smell if I remember correctly on Saturday right Tony?  

 That was nasty! And it won't be in 5 inches of water anyhow, just like 1/2 inch to 1 inch but i may just put it on top also as the water alone with the bubbler AND the spahgnum on the vinyl grating will be a whopping amount of humdity!

 

[swords]

My girlfriend was making retching noises and finally left the house while I was renovating the naturalistic terrarium last night!

The water was about 5"-7" deep depending upon evaporation as there was killifishes living in the "pond" portion. a suggestion could also be, make sure to put the sphag so there are some "open" air pockets here and there so the air can freely circulate. The horrid sulfer stench is made by bacteria consuming the oxygen devoid sphagnum. Basically-just the natural processes of composting going on in my living room! The house smells fine now but it was pretty bad last night-and all my chlothes were soaked with the water-like I fell in a swamp!