I got a tip for feeding dews...

[cephalotus88]

Ever felt a lack of insects? Too tired to buy crickets? Bummed out from killing cute lol bugs? If so, i have an alternative to feeding sundews...Pellet Fish Food!

I tried putting a pellet fish food on my care sundew, and in a bout a day, the pellet was engulfed by the leaf and dew was everywhere! Try it!

 

[CP2k]

Actually I have tried pellet fish food...it worked well enough for my droserae, but it burned a hole in the leaves of my mex. pings.
Maybe the piece was too big,
but in any case it would probably be best to use dried blood worm for pings and droserae.




(Edited by CP2k at 4:37 pm on April 5, 2002)


(Edited by CP2k at 2:23 am on April 18, 2002)

 

[Martin]

I know some people who have great success with milk.

In my experience milk works excellent with Heliamphora.

Every few weeks one or two drops in 30% of the pitchers....

Martin

 

[Dionaea Enthusiast]

I did not have a very good experience with pellet fish food...it wasn't the fish food's fault, but let's just say it ended up with dozens of maggots squirming around a dead S. purpurea venosa.

I much prefer rehydrated freeze-dried bloodworms.

Chris

 

[magore]

On impulse I purchase a fruit fly culture at a local petstore. After starting a few more cultures off of it I had fruit flys running out my ears and when I tried to feed my sundews over 3/4 of the flys hopped away.Luckly the sundews were outside.  Solution: I dumped the flys into a bag tied it shut and stuck it in the freezer. Now I have fresh food to feed my sundews and pitcher plants.
Marjorie

 

[DarthBuck]

Hey Dionaea Enthusiast,

Just wanted to say thanks. I'm sitting here perusing the forums eating my lunch and as I take a bite of my noodles, I read "... let's just say it ended up with dozens of maggots squirming around a dead S. purpurea venosa" Very nice mental image when eating noodles and hamburger.

D. Buck.

 

[jaje61]

I read from someone that they cut two holes in a milk jug and put some wet fruit loops or something in it, and it gets full of gnats. Then they blow through one hole blowing the gnats out the other and onto the sundews.

 

[Guest]

There's one thing I hate, and one thing I fear. I absolutely hate flies( especialy fruit flies) and maggits freak me out a whole lot. Once, while watching the Discovery channel, I saw a Komodo Dragon eating a carcass. It lifted its head, and maggits were all over its face, crawling and squirming. There must have been hundreds. Then I screamed out of shear disgust.

 

[Guest]

.....Hope I didn't scare you guys with that last post. Just wanted to say I'm freaked out by maggits.

 

[swords]

HA!

I'm no fan of maggots either but I do breed the fruitflies-my small nepenthes love em and I also feed them to my killifish but I keep the fly cultures outta sight cos it is nasty!

I've tried feeding my sundews fruitflies (they get up and walk away) and rehydrated bloodworms-the bloodworms get fungusy-how do you stop that from happening?

 

[timbudtwo]

Darthbuck does the hamburger help? It does say hamberger helper. But ive never really, you know, asked the noodles what they thought of the idea of intergration.

 

[Guest]

Rotten milk smells TERRIBLE. Also, to add to my other post about powdered fish food, the leaf it's applied to will sometimes die after feeding. If you want beautiful looking plants and don't mind if they grow slowly, don't feed them at all

Fruit Flies? BE CAREFUL! I bought a culture at a reptile show and they introduced mites into one of my terraria. I wish I could find a source for some "clean" fruit flies or even springtails. One of my friends has a crane fly infestation in his greenhouse - his sundews are VERY well fed and grow really fast.

 

[Dionaea Enthusiast]

Hey swords,

The bloodworms are usually attacked by fungus if 1) the plant is in a high-humidity environment or 2) if the leaf on which you're applying the bloodworm isn't bedewed, covered with mucous.

You can kill the fungus by using a q-tip to dab isopropyl (70% rubbing alcohol) onto the fungus. It works, but a good chunk of the leaf is also damaged.

Chris

(Edited by Dionaea Enthusiast at 5:53 am on May 25, 2002)

 

[Statik2426]

You breed fruitflies? Do you keep fruits in your house? I'm not surprised if some end up in them while your taking a bite. YUCK!

 

[Tamlin Dawnstar]

I have to agree with Matt in regards to terrarium grown plants: feeding them produces more problems than it solves. My plants go out into nature in the summer, and feed then as they will. In the fall I trim the dead lower leaves before placing them in terraria, and they get no further feeding until the spring.

 

[swords]

Well they're a specificall bred fruitfliy who does not fly they have useless wings so they can only hop. Poison Frog keepers also grow plenty of fruitflies (1 32 oz culture for each 2-3 frogs) as these frogs need minute food-2 week old crickets re too large). I don't keep my fruitflies in the kitchen next to the fruit of coutrse! They are in a tank stand under my 25 gallon aquarium on the other end of the house.

You can buy mite and aphid killing contact paper to line your fruitfly shelf or cabinet with it and this will keep your cultures from getting infested.

Yes, all my CPs are in high humidity terrariums (the sundews are dewy) my 2nd story condo is too warm & dry (even with 5 aquatic plant and fish aquariums full of water) for even the hardiest of normal plants. Cati might do good here if I had good windows but I don't even have that... so everything is in a terrarium. DO sundews not need as high humidity as say a Nepenthes?
I've always strived for the highest humidity possible. I do have a D. adelae in a pot with my N. ventricosa and it's never gotten larger than 1" tall (it's been there since Feb). My other adelae are 8" across or so in cooler slightly less humid terrariums.

 

[Dionaea Enthusiast]

Most sundews don't require humidity as high as with a Nepenthes.

Do you have a hygrometer (humidity meter) so that you can tell us the humidity % in the tanks where the fungus occurred? I pretty much agree with Tamlin in that I don't feed anything solid to terrarium-grown sundews. I do, however, use a non-organic fertilizer called Epiphyte's Delight. For most sundews (NOT adelae) I lightly mist their foliage with a 25% solution once monthly. I have had no fungus problems with ED. Message me for more info.

If you really want to feed your sundews fruitflies, you could try to SLOWLY lower the humidity in the terraria. Over a period of months, acclimate them to drier air by opening the tank vents slightly for a little while daily, opening them a bit more each time. If the plants lose their mucous, humidity has dropped too quickly, so close the vents again until they regain the mucous. Mucous matters.

Chris

 

[Tamlin Dawnstar]

Josh,

The Queensland Droserae are an exception to the "lower humidity" advice, these really appreciate close to 100%. I have better results with cool, less bright conditions, and very high humidity. Also they prefer it wet.

 

[swords]

Yes, that may be why the sundew i put in my N. ventricosa pot isn't getting bigger, it's got about 90% humidity but it's in super bright light and it gets a bit of fertilizer (Shultzs orchid fert diluted to 1/4 strength with a drop or two of aquatic plant trace elements) now and then. It is only a leaf cutting propagated plant anyway (an experiment I wanted to try) from my mother plant so I'll let it be and see where it ends up a year from now for better or worse. It's just so weird that it hasn't even developed mature adelae leaves, just the tiny D. adelae seedling leaves. It doesn't seem to be maturing.

The D. spathulata which fungused was in one of those 2 gallon clear glass cookie jars they sell at Walmart for the kitchen (with a moulded all clear glass lid), the lid was heavy (basically sealed) so no air exchange.
The plant is now in my 75 gallon vivarium planted at the edge of an artificial peat bog I think the plant is smiling now-if that's at all possible!

Also the springtails and other tiny bugs which live in my vivarium get caught in the sundews now and I save the FFs for the Neps and Killies. Occasionally I see the FFs walking over the sundews when i'm feeding the killifish in the vivarium even though the dews have plenty of mucus. I think the FFs available for fish & frogs are also heavier bodied than the FFs that show up if you let an orange peel sit in the trash for too long. Honestly, I haven't eaten a piece of fruit in years so I don't remember what exactly house FFs look like.

 

[Guest]

I grow a drosera adelae on my windowsill, and it produced drops of muculige. But, it wasn't the fastest of growers and it caught some anoying fruit flies.