Can I feed a VFT worms?

[feedme]

I have to grow my VFT indoors under lights due to extremely high temperatures outside. We have already hit 107 with 10% humidity this year. It looks like it is going to be a scorcher this year. Last year was nice, it only hit 117F.

Anyway, since my plant is grown indoors it does not get the opportunity to catch its own bugs. It is also difficult to find bugs suitable for the hungry little traps. I am wondering if I can feed it some small red worms. I have them in a worm compost bin. They eat biodegradable scraps and paper. I don't think they eat live material. They wriggle plenty enough to activate the trap, but are not so wriggly that I think they will be able to escape.

Thank in advance your your advise.

 

[maneatingmoo]

I fed my VFT a worm once. The plant wasn't harmed at all. It should be fine for you to feed yours a worm, but I'd get more opinions than mine.

 

[feedme]

This is good news for me, so far. I have thousands of worms available in the worm compost bin, or basically an unlimited supply since they are breeding in there as well.

Thank you so much for the quick reply.

 

[grumpus]

I just started a worm bin not long ago. I would guess that using Eisenia fetida as food for VFTs wouldn't be harmfu as long as you aren't putting really nasty things in your worm bin (which you shouldn't anyway, if you want to use the castings). I've seen a lot of people talk about feeding dried bloodworms to Drosera and Pinguicula.

The only other thing that comes to mind is the slime that E. fetida secrete under heavy stress. I've heard some people say it smells bad, but I don't think it's even an irritant, let alone toxic to anything. I doubt it would bother a trap at all.

The closest I've come to this is feeding a cankerworm to a VFT a few weeks ago. The trap digested it, reopened, and seems fine.

 

[Jefforever]

I'd chop it up first. Having things hanging out of traps doesn't look too good. To me at least.

But then again, it wouldn't move around like you want it to.

 

[grumpus]

Yeah, you wouldn't be able to use whole mature worms - they're too large. But if you have a bin well underway you should have lots of youngsters that would fit fully inside traps. Even if you have to chop a large worm up, I imagine the parts will still wiggle long enough to use as food.

Also, if you leave the worm's head and at least ten segments past the clitellum intact, the head will grow into a full worm again. A lot of people think tail ends regenerate too, but they don't.

So if you wanted to avoid killing any worms you could use snipped, freshly-wiggling worm tails as food.

 

[petmantis]

Yewww....i remember Blokeman told me he fed a whole worm to his N. ventricosa, and then very soon after, there was nothing in the trap, the whole thing was gone! Personally, i myself am extremely annoyed to find that my vft's traps are closed on a fly or anything else, i guess i'm just one of those weird people who'd rather see the nice trap open to admire the coloration one time, i saw a fly freshly captured in a vft's trap, and i got my tweezers and released it, so i could admire the trap itself of course, i only do this with really nice, colorful traps that i prefer over lightly tinted greenish traps. Anyone else have weird aesthetics like me?

 

[SpyCspider]

Been feeding redworms (E. foetida) to my flytraps growing indoors for some time now. You can buy a small container that contains 30 or so worms living in peat moss from Petco for cheap. Coincidentally, you can usually get pinsized crickets from them too if you prefer insects.

At first I was hesitant with the worms because I thought the pure fat/protein content would make the trap rot like feeding it raw hamburger, but they all digested them perfectly. I've been snipping off the tails to appropriate size to feed the traps but yea, they do stink. And I ddint' know about the tails not regenerating till now, altho Wiki says they do. Anyways, they do wiggle enough to keep the traps stimulated, but overall impression is it takes longer for the traps to realize it's food, but shorter time to digest.

And they open cleanly...no exoskeleton obviously. The only remants would be indigestible peat moss and maybe dried up slime.