SOMETHING has been eating large chunks of leafy material from my VFTs! Two or three of my typicals from the .99 cent store, my akai ryu, and now my B52 are all missing chunks of their plant flesh! I first noticed it on the Akai Ryu because a new large trap that went up was missing a significant amount of material on its leaf base suddenly, like somebody took a small paper hole punch and nibbled out chunks of it. Upon closer examination, I noticed some of my typicals had leaf bases that were the same way. I had seen a few little tiny bugs in the soil here and there which I suppose is to be expected, but there's NO WAY they could have eaten the sheer amount of tissue that was missing because they are so small and I never see them on the plants. It would take something the size of a wasp or caterpillar to do that. I'd put them outside several times before and wasn't sure if maybe it was something outside that ate them, but I decided to do a dunk in some water anyway.
Last week I submerged my 3 pots (2 pots of VFTs, and 1 sarracenia) for 2 days as a preventative measure. They came out a little worse for the wear (a couple of my akai ryu's leaves started to droop), but they are doing fine now. Anyway, this morning, I noticed one of my B52s that had a new trap that was about to open was missing a large amount of tissue around the top of the trap. In fact, it doesn't even have any tentacles/fingers there. I'm not sure if this tissue was eaten before the bath, or not, but it has me worried now that something is still eating my plants! I'll take some pics when I get home, but near as I can tell, there's nothing in the soil that is eating them. There's no infestation. Perhaps this new trap was damaged from before, but I'm still wary. I have not put them outside since before the bath.
Any idea what could be eating them? They look healthy otherwise besides the missing leafy material. In fact the Akai Ryu leaf base that got eaten is doing fine since the center of it was unharmed and only the sides got munched on. On a side note, one of my other large B52 traps caught something. Perhaps it was the culprit. I can't tell until it reopens sometime in the near future.
Last week I submerged my 3 pots (2 pots of VFTs, and 1 sarracenia) for 2 days as a preventative measure. They came out a little worse for the wear (a couple of my akai ryu's leaves started to droop), but they are doing fine now. Anyway, this morning, I noticed one of my B52s that had a new trap that was about to open was missing a large amount of tissue around the top of the trap. In fact, it doesn't even have any tentacles/fingers there. I'm not sure if this tissue was eaten before the bath, or not, but it has me worried now that something is still eating my plants! I'll take some pics when I get home, but near as I can tell, there's nothing in the soil that is eating them. There's no infestation. Perhaps this new trap was damaged from before, but I'm still wary. I have not put them outside since before the bath.
Any idea what could be eating them? They look healthy otherwise besides the missing leafy material. In fact the Akai Ryu leaf base that got eaten is doing fine since the center of it was unharmed and only the sides got munched on. On a side note, one of my other large B52 traps caught something. Perhaps it was the culprit. I can't tell until it reopens sometime in the near future.