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VFT woes!

A

Angellus

Guest
I need help!  I recently inherited a VFT from my gran and it has been doing well, feeding and growing nicely.  It sits on a very bright windowsill in the bathroom and I water it religiously.  Then it went dormant over Christmas - fine.  Now it is growing lots and lots of nice new leaves, but when they reach maturation and start to open up, they don't open the whole way and more worrying is the fact that they won't eat.  No matter how many still-wriggling insects I try and feed them, they just stay half open and do nothing!  I am concerned that the plant is putting all this energy into growing new leaves and is slowly starving to death in the process!  How do I get its appetite back?  HELP!
 
Hey Angellus,

To start Welcome to the Forums!!
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( I would grab a snack - this may be a long one )


Here is goes:

First...

You are watering the plant with DISTILLED water right?
( just have to ask )

The plant doesn't need to eat a bug. Think about feeding your plant ( or it catching something on its own ) as fertilizer. That is pretty much what it is.

The VFT grows in soil that is void of everything. Very poor and acidic. So that is why fertilizing the 'natural way ' ( any plant fertilizer you can buy ) is bad. The plant isn't use to that. IT WILL DIE!
So it developed a method of catching bugs to replace what it cannot get from the soil.
WHen you fertilize a plant...it will grow fast and look a little better...sure. But if you don't fertilize a plant, it will still grow. maybe not as fast, but it will get there
smile.gif
.
Anyway...
It is not necessary to feed your plant ( as some think. ) You can though feed it a bug about 1-2 times a month. Anymore than that and you run the risk of OVERFERTILIZING ( get it ). If you do this...sometimes the plant will not produce new traps ( it will think that it is doing fine with what it has ). The worse case is it will die from over feeding.
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As long as your plant is growing, I wouldn't worry at all. You are doing fine! If these are brand new traps and leaves...they might not open all the way.

Also, if the temperature in the bathroom isn't high enough, the traps will not function properly ( say better than 75 degrees ). The cooler the temps, the slower they function ( if they function at all ).

Even though the plant doesn't 'eat' a bug, the leaves still help out by producing energy for the plant ( photosynthesis ). So don't worry. Just make sure that the plant is getting 8-10 hours of light a day.

AND

Have fun! :biggrin:

Let us know how the plant is doing!
 
Can I just say that contrary to what you might think, I find the last thing VFTs want to do is eat straight after dormancy. They grow small traps and large leaves because they are more interested in growing surface area to make use of the low spring light levels. As you have found out, the spring traps don't always seem to close and so I would wait until April or something befoe attempting to feed.
 
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