TerraForums Venus Flytrap, Nepenthes, Drosera and more talk
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Are we talking live or those canned ones(I think you mentioned it)?
If live, meal worms are cheaper and easy to breed. Crickets stink to high heaven if you keep any for a while.
Your plant might benefit from using both. I can't say this with certainty, but diet variety is essential for us, and different insects probably have different nutrients. A variable diet of different insects could be interesting.
I trust a true insect to not rot a pitcher or trap. Mealworms may not cause a reaction, but given a choice, I'd use crickets. Personally, I toss stray critters in my pitchers. But Joe has more experience than I.....
When I used to have a leopard gecko, I read not to feed them too many meal worms, because they have a very tough shell and can be hard to digest. I'd say that a Nep's pitcher fluids can't be stronger than a gecko's digestive fluids, so I'd go with crickets too.
But like Joe said, if you want to keep either long term, meal worms are definitely better, and you can just keep the lil ones in the fridge so they don't become beetles.
Mokele,
I had no idea mealworms were that high in fat. I "assumed" crickets were actually higher. My bad. I think the probelm with mealies for animals is they gulp them down w/o killing them, and they can do some internal damage that way.
No doubt on the waxies for being fatty. Are red worms ..like the small type of earth worm? That might work in a Nep, but even a tiny chunk does really bad in a VFT. Rots the trap. I would think a earth worm would be worse than a waxie.
Mealworms are slightly higher in protein (19%) and much higher in fat (14%) than crickets. As a result, they will promote more rapid growth than a diet of only crickets. Although numbers vary from study to study, Ca ratios for mealworms range from .07:1 to .33:1.
Keep in mind that mealworms have a hard shell made a material call chitin. Some animals produce an enzyme that quickly breaks down these shells, but nonetheless, mealworms can be difficult for baby or weakened reptiles to digest.
I have rotted pitchers with both meal and wax worms. The fat is probably the cause, but portioning may also have been the culprit. I have used crickets - live and canned - with no harm, but I was more careful with portion size. I like Joe's idea of variety, it seems to make sense. My neps outside catch a huge variety of bugs and seem to grow better than those inside that I hand feed (mostly goldfish or koi pellets).
I feed my neps with bigger traps each a large cricket from the can o crickets they sell at the pet store.I have no rotting problems. I keep them in the freezer.
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