MealWorms, or not MealWorms, that is the Question...

[MrFus]

I'm thinking to start feeding my Rafflesiana with dried mealworms once per week but I dont know if I can just put the worms straight on the pitchers or I should smash the worms a little in order to break the exoskeleton...

What you recommend?

Is there some other kind of dry food that I can use?

 

[Zero]

I would crush them a bit.
freeze dried crickets or bloodworms should be in the pet stores in the same section as the mealworms. I don't know which is better though.

 

[Divine Tree]

i use live mealworms, they dont stink or rot the pitchers. Ive never tried any dry food...i didnt think it would work because the plant doesnt really "eat" it, but kinda sucks the "juice"(lol my ignorance is bliss)

 

[MrFus]

I'm going for the dry ones to store the food more easy, my Rafflesiana is the only one that is geting too big to keep "eating" ants from the yard... plus we are going to spray arround the house soon, and to hunt ants is a time consuming process, etc, etc.

 

[upper]

i heard koi pellet is pretty good, i'll try it out soon.

 

[xvart]

You could just fertilize all of your Nepenthes through the soil. It's much easier, less time consuming, and better results (in my opinion).

xvart.

 

[CPsInAtl]

I feed mine live mealworms, but I keep geckos so I always have a steady supply on hand from my breeding colony.

I generally pop a mealie in any new open pitcher.

But if i was going freeze-dried, I'd probably go ahead and crumble them up.

 

[MrFus]

I keep puting some bugs on the pitchers because is kind of cool to tell people that I was feeding my plants and I feel that do this is a more "natural" way to fertilize...

 

[Cindy]

Hubby keeps carnivorous fish but he only feeds them the mealworms. The pupae, he feeds to my Neps.

 

[rattler]

i just pour some diluted amounts of this into the pitchers

its what ive been using on my veggie garden this year, figured it to be a good choice for my neps......personally i wouldnt be using meal worms specifically to feed my plants.....seems a waste of money, hell ive got a roach and isopod colony going and havent bothered trying to feed them to my neps.....

 

[Fryster]

Where does one find fish emulsion?? (not locally, that's for sure...)

I can't even find a decent source online.

 

[rattler]

im in BFE and i buy it at the local ACE hardware

http://www.acehardwareoutlet.com/(jdlf1e452nci1y551njcfkip)/ProductDetails.aspx?SKU=72306

 

[Laura]

I feed live mealworms to all my Neps and they seem to like it. For normal sized pitchers I only feed 2 or 3 at a time. The truncata gets more, of course, and I haven't noticed any foul odors coming out of it yet.

This is demented, but sometimes I name them before I drop them in the pitchers. I haven't quite made my way through the current administration yet - must feed my plants more often!

I feed mealworms to the VFTs, too, but sometimes they chew the pitchers trying to escape. It's hard trying to find ones that are small enough for the flytraps but I find they do really well when fed.

Haven't tried the dried ones...

Laura

 

[MrFus]

Ok... I get two kind of mealworms, the freeze-dry ones and a can of ZooMed's Can O' Worms:

I open the can and almost puke the lunch...

I check the expiration date and was ok, but the smell was so strong that I don't dare to put it on the freezer, so that can of food go to the trash. (the only one interested on the can was my cat... I guess the smell was tasteful for him!)

The dry ones don't have any smell, so I think this will be the ones to use, I'm going to hydrate a little bit the worm before droping it on the pitcher and let see how good the plants do with this meal.