Flightless Fruit Flies as food for VFTs, Thoughts?

[AgentWh0]

I was wondering what anyone's thoughts are about using flightless fruit flies from a culture to feed the VFTs. I tried it, but the success rate of one of the traps being triggered was not good and I also don't think the fruit flies would provide enough nutrients to be worth the plants effort. What do you guys think?

 

[hcarlton]

Fruit flies are not useful as flytrap food, unless you're feeding seedlings. They're small enough to climb out of the traps when they close, and even if contained don't provide enough worth, possibly not even enough stimulation, for the plant to bother going through with sealing and digesting the capture. They could be used to feed sticky-leaved plants like Pinguicula and Drosera (which is where the escapees here go), but it's just as easy to give such plants fertilizer or freeze-dried foods like bloodworms etc.

 

[Not a Number]

If you put a bunch of fruit flies in the freezer or refrigerator and then put a few dozen in a trap at a time it might be worth it. If the flies are dead though you're going to have gently squeeze or tap the trap every now and then so the trap senses it is containing live prey. Otherwise the trap won't close tightly and start producing the digestive enzymes and just open up again.