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Nepenthes feeding

  • #41
Tony,
Since my Neps are outdoors, they do pretty well for themselves catching ants, flies, and other stupid insects that fall prey to them. Occasionally I will supplement with mealworms and flies that come into my house. For my lowlanders on the windowsills, I supplement with mealworms and flies that make it into the house. I usually leave a door or two open when I'm out back gardening to induce flies, but most people aren't as nuts as I am. So stick with the mealworms cuz you can keep them in your fridge for many months and they don't stink!

Joel
 
  • #42
Welcome Joel and thanks for your input! Personally I would say.. eccentric instead of nuts hehe. I think Nep G raises and uses meal worms also.

Stephano and Cindy I have used freeze dried crickets and bloodworms. Both seem to do ok. I have not tried the canned crickets but don't see any reason why they would not be fine.. other than storing them after opening the can. (which is why I have tried to find something dried and easily stored). I have also tried various fish food pellets high in protein etc. In most cases they cause my pitchers to brown at the fluid level which leads me to believe I am causing secondary fungus/bacteria growth in the pitchers. Perhaps from overfeeding or just due to the rapid decomposition of these types of food compared to insects with hard exoskeletons. So far I have not found a substitute for live insects that gives at least equivalent results. I have since given up trying to find an insect substitute since it is not a practical way for me to feed in my situation.
Tony
 
  • #43
Welcome Joel:

I see you have become an addition to this important forum. I hope you enjoy it as much as most of us do.


Agustin
 
  • #44
Well, I've given my ventricosa about 2 drops of milk per pitcher once a month.  The up side is it grows 3 times faster, the downside is that if you damage the piture or get the milk on a non-digestive part the piture browns up healf way right away and stays part alive for the rest of it's lifespan, lol.  But still, 3 TIMES FASTER!... OMG I'm overdue for feeding... (2% works best)... Oh and I can feed my new baby!

Edit: Cindy, tadpoles are vegitarians. That smell is probubly kelp, either that or the food deliverd future kidney failier with the legs, lol.

Others: I've found that canivorious fish food pellots and milk work about the same, except milk is digested faster and doesn't mold up on me as often. My Ventricosa with milk had very similar results in color and size as the above plants with the slow release fertilizer.
 
  • #45
ooo i gotta try this milk thing, any idea if itll work with other neps?
 
  • #46
Interesting phenomenon about the milk, anyone care to translate that to insect equivalents?

I don't usually feed my neps, they catch their own food, but I was wondering, I recently bought a N. Gentle which does not seem capable of catching its own food. It produces no discernible nectar, there is little liquid in the pitchers, and I doubt the liquid has any digestive capabilities.

Question is, to feed, or not to feed?
 
  • #47
Hi,

I know many people who feed their Nepenthes with milk. In Germany there were many articles and hints on websites on this subject. A friend of mine grows ~ 30-40 Nepenthes in big show-cases, some of them already in flowersize. He feeds them with milk on a regular basis and it is obvious how fast the plants grow. So why do you hesitate to try it? The plants want the same nutrients as a mammal.

Jan

Here you find a german article on milk feeding: http://www.carnivoren.org/de....ng.html
(you can translate it with google or babelfish)
 
  • #48
Well, it was quite an interesting read after translation!
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  I think I got the meaning though.  Thanks for sharing!

SF
 
  • #49
I'm not quite sure how to translate the webpage...
 
  • #51
About a week ago, I gave all of my sarracenia, pings, dews, and neps some 2% milk diluted with 1/5 water (um, 4 parts milk, one part water). Anyway, it was really cool. Before I knew it, the D. capensis's tentacles had completely moved to the center of the leaf, and a couple of minutes later, the leaves completely curled around the milk. I then gave some to my red dragon vft, and the trap closed tight on the milk, and a couple of days later, was completely absorbed. All the vfts and sarracenia I fed are now making bigger traps then before, and are growing faster (many leaves
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). I am very pleased with the results.
 
  • #52
I've fed neps a Can-o-Crickets.  That is the only supplementary feeding I've done.  I fed some dying but well-sized pitchers on some large plants I got from local nurserys.  

This is probably a good thread to note for anyone that is interested all the bugs my lowland neps catch here in Florida. Whatever works in the Old World seems to work pretty well here also:  

Flies of every type, gnats, spiders, crickets (on their own as well as hand fed), flying ants, love bugs, misc. weird and pretty large bugs I'm not quite sure of (one was a big http://www.insects.org/entophiles/hemiptera/hemi_009.html assassin bug, I recently figured out) and -- YES! -- even the occasional stupid mosquito.  I saw two floating (meaning "fresh meat") in pitchers this morning.  

I did like the results I got from hand feeding crickets to the larger plants.  All of them began growing better.  Part of that was better conditions, but food did not hurt.
 
  • #53
Here in San Diego, the late-sumer-to-early-fall house invasions of those little black Argentinian ants are finally winding down. I used to spray the little suckers with Windex or Formula 409 and wipe them off the kitchen countertops by the thousands. Now I sweep them up into a dustpan and dump them into my nepenthes terrarium. So for the past two months, the pitcher plants have been feasting.

The ants are still annoying, but since I started growing pitcher plants I've been able to put the little critters to good use!

The pitcher plants are thriving, BTW...
 
  • #54
I really hate the act of killing and defrosting insects (live crickets from the reptile shop) to feed my plants but their growth has become quite remarkable because of it so I feed them every 2 weeks.

In the begining I was scared to overfeed but one crushed cricket into each pitcher which hasn't started to decline seems to keep the hungry mouths satisfied. Tonight I fed over 100 crickets to my active Nepenthes pitchers (and a few into the Cephalotus mound). I have not ever added anything to my Heliamphora as they seem to catch plenty of fruitflies or gnats from the looks of it.
 
  • #55
Borneo,

What was the osmocote ratio you used? I know you stated it a long time ago, but I forgot, and I think the post has probalby dripped into oblivion by now...

Oh... and as for milk and why the plants like it...

Milk is designed to be easily digestible by simple, still developing digestive systems. Cows milk contains quite a few different protiens, but two noteable ones are casein and whey isolate, these are VERY simple forms of protien and can rapidly be broken down into amino acids and processed for growth...

there ya go!
 
  • #56
i feed my n. x rokko female
xmas beetles (when they are around)
my neps also catch cockroaches
moths,sometimes wasps,and alot of ants!!! but the most "she" gets is the moths
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  • #57
I have always fed my nepenthese with chemical fertilizers, no particular brand right now im using some new fertilizer my local orchid house is making, seems to be working nicely so far at least for my nepenthese. Its a 1-0-1 and i think my orchids want more N and P.

But I almost forgot, Josh was correct, I have fed toads to truncatas in the past. The key with large prey like that is that you have to not care that it smells like a rotting carcass in your greenhouse. No seriously though it reaks thats why its best to use something thats been dead for awhile so its nice and dehydrated, thats why i prefer toads only after they have been accidentally stomped on. This happens alot in northern greehouses because toads like to over winter in them.
 
  • #58
I feed my plants every two weeks now, after a discussion with swords. As for what I feed them, it depends on the size of the pitcher... Here is a list of the items:

Can o' worms (mealworms) I sometimes cut these into smaller pieces for smaller pitchers. Great food.

Can o' crickets (large) I only feed these to the huge pitchered plants like N. rafflesiana and N. x 'Judith Finn'

Fluker's freeze dried crickets: A little smaller than above, great for medium sized pitchers

Freeze dried freshwater shrimp/Gammarus pullex (these are pretty small) After an experiment with wonderful results, this is my small pitcher food of choice. Really works!!

Fish food flakes: In smaller pieces of food, these work quite well.

I try to feed as big of a variety of foods as possible, that way, the plants get all of the nutrients they possibly can. I normally feed every open pitcher, usually with a different food item in each. Every month or two, a few drops of milk are given to some pitchers. Like animals, every plant seems to react in its own way to certain foods. I feed pitchers something easy like the shrimp their first meal, and I step up and up to the highest protein/fat content items.(the mealworms) This allows the pitcher to produce the neccesary acids/enzymes to break down the food. Also, please note that with nonliving food items, it helps to shake the pitchers a little for the next couple of days, to simulate prey struggling. This is my experiance after quite a while.
Just my 1/2 of a penny times four.
         GOOD LUCK!!

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       Lithopsman
 
  • #59
Also,
I think this is pretty obvious, but I only feed active, full of enzymes pitchers. Make sure the food item can be fully submerged in the enzymes. When first getting a plant, resist the urge to feed it right away. Give it some acclimation time... Probably minimum of a week from my experiance. GOOD LUCK!!
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  • #60
has anyone tried selcon? its a fish food suppliment that is pure HUFA or highly unsaturated fatty acids. I've been wanting to try it but I currantly don't have any pitchers I'm willing to sacrifice.

its kinda of expensive and comes in alittle 4 oz bottle with an eye dropper. It has apicture of a clown fish and its pink.

just an idea.......what do you guys thinki?
 
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