...Squeamish to Insects

I heard somewhere (I forgot where, maybe on this forum?) that the chitin in insects triggers the digestive enzymes of Nepenthes and allows them to better absorb nutrients from fertilizer. I'm switching to feeding my neps with both Osmocote and dried black soldier fly larvae.

If you dont want to handle BSFL maybe you can have someone grind them up in a blender and turn them pretty much into "flour". Although I guess that depends on whether you're squeamish to how insects look or just the thought of them
 
Last edited:
You might be thinking of this thread here. https://www.carnivorousplantsociety...penthes-on-windowsill.3004/page-19#post-49575

I've got a whole new bag of cricket flour (no additives). It's finely ground enough that it doesn't even look like crickets. It does kind-of smell like a lizard cage though. Do you think dried black soldier fly larvae are a better food source?

ETA: I do appreciate that the bugs come pre-ground. I really don't want to deal with getting insect dust everywhere in my kitchen.
 
Hey @spiffyzha! Found this Reddit comment from user BunsenH while digging. Could be worthwhile teaching out to this person.

"For what it's worth, I've been feeding three VFTs with vegetarian protein sources, as an experiment. The one "eating" whey protein has done so-so, the one with textured vegetable protein has done okay, and the one "eating" tofu has done amazingly well. When the plants were fairly small, they didn't lose traps to rot, but as they grew larger, the tendency for the traps to be killed has increased. I figured that as long as the plants were getting lots of sunlight, if they got enough nutrients from one trap to grow two or more new leaves-with-traps, they were ahead of the game. I have a couple of theories regarding why the traps died, and will be experimenting to validate. The plants are still recovering from their winter in my refrigerator."

https://www.reddit.com/r/SavageGarden/comments/11f2kfc/_/l4nb9ce
 
A small update of science, a few hours after feeding (ie, at this stage I can tell you which things are recognized as food, but not which things will later kill the leaf):


Preparation notes:
* I mixed the cricket powder with warm water before feeding it to plants. It turns out that crickets don't really "hummus up" very well. So it would be more accurate to describe the resulting product as "brown-tinted water with cricket-sand at the bottom". It also has that classic lizard cage smell.

* Fish food pellets were prepared by soaking in bit of hot/warm water for ~30 min before feeding to plants. The result is kind-of slippery and squishy.

* The brewer's yeast slurry was also prepared with warm water.

* Osmocote pellets were used as-is, with a spritz of water afterward to wet it a bit.



VFTs:
* Each of the four preparations were fed to different traps on a single VFT plant.

* The VFT doesn't seem to even recognize the cricket slurry as food, and is re-opening only a few hours later.

* The fish food pellets seems to be being squished out the side as the VFT attempts to digest them. But the plant is definitely trying to digest it.

* The VFT seems to like the nutritional yeast so far.

* Osmocote isn't really water soluble, and the pellets are pretty big for small/medium sized traps. I don't know what my VFT will make of it, but it's still trying I guess.


Drosera:
* I have two similarly sized drosera of the same type, so each one got to try two of the things on two different leaves.

* The leaves with the brewer's yeast and with the cricket slurry have folded over and appear to be digesting, and did so on about the same timescale.

* The leaf with an osmocote pellet has a bunch of dew-hairs (?) attached to the pellet and is clearly trying to eat it, but it has not (yet?) folded over.
* The fish food pellet is being completely ignored.


Pinguicula:
* I have two similarly sized pinguicula of the same type, so each one got to try two of the things on two different leaves.

* The fish food pellet has dried up, and the osmocote pellet was always dry, so I'm not sure my pings will get anything out of those.

* The cricket slurry and nutritional yeast paste have also dried out and appear as just a colored layer on the leaves.

* I don't really know how to tell if the pinguicula like what they're eating, but I guess I'll see if the leaves die or whatever?
 
I apologize if you already did this, but with VFTs, they do need to think it's "live" meaning multiple triggers within a 20 second window on their leaf hairs.
So I typically give them a little squeeze, actually excessively, about 3 or 4 times after the trap initially closes. By 24 hrs, it's sealed up proper.
 
spiffyzha said:
You might be thinking of this thread here. https://www.carnivorousplantsociety...penthes-on-windowsill.3004/page-19#post-49575

I've got a whole new bag of cricket flour (no additives). It's finely ground enough that it doesn't even look like crickets. It does kind-of smell like a lizard cage though. Do you think dried black soldier fly larvae are a better food source?

ETA: I do appreciate that the bugs come pre-ground. I really don't want to deal with getting insect dust everywhere in my kitchen.
Click to expand...
yep, thats the one! Thanks!

From my research on keeping reptiles, BSFL is more nutritious than crickets so I figured they might be better for Neps too but who knows :shrug:
 
VictorFoxtrotTango said:
I apologize if you already did this, but with VFTs, they do need to think it's "live" meaning multiple triggers within a 20 second window on their leaf hairs.
So I typically give them a little squeeze, actually excessively, about 3 or 4 times after the trap initially closes. By 24 hrs, it's sealed up proper.
Click to expand...

np! I usually use a paperclip or something to get inside the trap between the outer spines, and then wiggle it around a bit until the trap stops getting tighter.

That said, it could have totally been a texture issue with the crickets. It has the consistency of sandy water, so it's possible I jiggled all the (nutrient-dense?) cricket-water out and then the remaining (nutrient-poor?) cricket-sand wasn't a very good food source. But that's a bit speculative.
 
KingLouisCLXXII said:
From my research on keeping reptiles, BSFL is more nutritious than crickets so I figured they might be better for Neps too but who knows :shrug:
Click to expand...
That's interesting! Do you have a feel for what the reptiles prefer about the BSFL? ie, is it a better set of vitamins for them, or more calorie dense, or is it more like a better protein/fat ratio or something?
 
Slightly more science:

* The VFT trap with the betta food bits has re-opened. I claimed before that the pellet was being squished out by the trap, but I see now that there was actually still quite a bit left inside. I guess it just doesn't like fish food. Or cricket slurry.

* The VFT is still working on both the nutritional yeast and the osmocote pellet. Honestly, it looks ridiculous trying to chew the osmocote:
IMG_2617.jpeg



* The drosera leaves with the osmocote pellet and with the betta food pellet are just beginning to fold over. The cricket and nutritional yeast leaves are still folded over and, one assumes, digesting.
IMG_2619.jpeg


* Both pinguicula look more drool-y than they did before, but on *all* their leaves, not just the ones with food bits. So, maybe my methodology of feeding two leaves per ping was non-optimal...

* Food was allocated to pinguicula as follows: Ping1 got crickets and yeast; Ping2 got osmocote and fish food. The pings must each like at least one of the food sources it got.
 
spiffyzha said:
Slightly more science:

* The VFT trap with the betta food bits has re-opened. I claimed before that the pellet was being squished out by the trap, but I see now that there was actually still quite a bit left inside. I guess it just doesn't like fish food. Or cricket slurry.

* The VFT is still working on both the nutritional yeast and the osmocote pellet. Honestly, it looks ridiculous trying to chew the osmocote:
View attachment 28492


* The drosera leaves with the osmocote pellet and with the betta food pellet are just beginning to fold over. The cricket and nutritional yeast leaves are still folded over and, one assumes, digesting.
View attachment 28493

* Both pinguicula look more drool-y than they did before, but on *all* their leaves, not just the ones with food bits. So, maybe my methodology of feeding two leaves per ping was non-optimal...

* Food was allocated to pinguicula as follows: Ping1 got crickets and yeast; Ping2 got osmocote and fish food. The pings must each like at least one of the food sources it got.
Click to expand...
Do you happen to have images of the pings? I'm curious how drool-y they are!
 
KingLouisCLXXII said:
dried black soldier fly larvae.
Click to expand...

This is useful to know. I sometimes pick soldier fly larva out of my vermicompost bins because, even though they're not harmful to the bin and don't fly much, I dislike having so many insects on my balcony near my windows. Rather than toss them now, I'll try feeding them to something large enough to handle a full sized pupa...
 
spiffyzha said:
So, you all convinced me I need to start feeding my plants more regularly. As much as I'd love to feed my plants solely on a diet of boiled broccoli, I'm pretty sure my partner wouldn't appreciate a lingering broccoli smell in the house, heh. Plus, given that I myself don't eat meat, I can just *hear* the cries of plant abuse, how I shouldn't be foisting my unnatural lifestyle choices on innocent plants, etc.

So, I've acquired some food-options for my plants that I can more or less tolerate being in the same room with! I have:

* 180-day 16-10-10 osmocote pellets (a bit hard to find in Canada, but people seem to swear by the stuff. Apparently some people even recommend sticking some pellets right into the medium for Nepenthes. mind=blown.)

* Hikari brand "Betta Bio-Gold" fish food pellets. It seems to have the same basic ingredients in the same basic order as most of the other fish food options, but only 4% fat content, which.... now that I type it out, I don't know if carnivorous plants even mind a higher fat content in their food. It's 12% ash which seems to be where the "P" and "K" are located.

* Cricket powder, human grade. Ew. But I guess it is what the nepenthes crave? Maybe I can turn it into a nice hummus-like slurry for the plants.

* Nutritional yeast. Really, I already had that lying around, and I'm not sure how useful it'll be for this -- but the thing is, none of the foods made by, for, and of animals list their available nitrogen content. I guess it's not really relevant for animal foods. ...But I was able to find this: https://www.gardenmyths.com/yeast-super-fertilizer-for-plants/ Methodology complaints aside, it seems clear that nutritional yeast has a very high nitrogen content. It seems to also be an ingredient in basically all fish foods. It's possible that it might be even better to feed one's carnivorous plants *live* yeast, if in fact killing the yeast makes the nitrogen more readily bio-available.


Now to start on the science-ing! :D
Click to expand...

I find bug bites brand fish food works well for Drosera.
 
Minor update of science:

* The VFT has given up on the osmocote pellet, but is still digesting the nutritional yeast.

* The droseras are still working on eating all of the things, but they're definitely more excited about the crickets and nutritional yeast than the fish food or osmocote.

* The pinguicula ... still have everything sitting on top of their leaves? I don't know, those guys are a mystery to me.
 
A bit more science:

--
* Although the VFT had given up on eating the osmocote pellet, that trap seems to have gotten re-triggered somehow, and it's been trying to eat the osmocote pellet again for the last couple of days.

* I think the VFT's osmocote trap might be dying.

* The VFT had been working hard on the brewer's yeast this whole time, but the trap re-opened again last night. Yum, nitrogen.

--
* The drosera seems to have given up on the osmocote pellet.

* The drosera is still working on the betta food pellet, the cricket powder, and the brewer's yeast, at least to some extent. It doesn't look like there's much left of the brewer's yeast though.

--
* The pinguiculas' status is unchanged.
 
Woo hoo! New science update! Was thinking about this all week.

How do we know if the ping enjoyed its meal? Any ping experts able to chime in?

What brand yeast are you using? Also, do you mind sending a photo of the VFT trap with the pellet?
 
Ryry said:
What brand yeast are you using? Also, do you mind sending a photo of the VFT trap with the pellet?
Click to expand...

The jar says the brand is Everland, but I'm not positive I didn't refill it from the bulk bin at some point. I'm not sure if there's any difference between brands; IMO they all taste the same. It's .... definitely an acquired taste.

Here's the dead (there's no question anymore) trap with the osmocote pellet:
DeadOsmocoteTrap.jpeg



In other science-news:

* One of the cricket slurry traps got re-triggered somehow, and so the plant is trying to digest that again.

* This seems like a high number of trap re-triggers. I'm not sure if I'm hitting the traps somehow when I spray water at them and then the contents that are already there are tasty enough to get the digestive juices flowing and make the trap double down again, or if the trap contents are actually attracting bugs somehow, or what. My methodology may need a bit of work. :P
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top