Growing Food yum.....
 

I got this idea when I saw some fruit flies flying around the banana and I caught one put it on my ping(kind of cruel).Then I thought that:what bout growing some insects on your own?So,anyone has idea?Fruit fly maggot would be good.

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Marvin, there are some lab companies that sell drosophila culture but largely meant for lab research and university practical courses. My friend used to order some for his small insect-eating geckos. Although they are sold in bulk and may cost a bit expensive. They have a catalog for you to choose, such as winged, wingless, vestigial (small) wing, red eye, white eye etc. It's an ideal bite size for CPs but if the price is a drawback I guess there is no point as we don't need that much flies at one time. Unless you have a CP farm :D

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i do know that there are something call wingless fruitflies, trying to get it at the moment but not sure if the creature is true or not

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Oh yes they exist, fruit flies are one of most studied creature on the planet. They used in genetic studies and education. The result is the DNA map was done through inducing genetic mutations and then crossing the different mutations. There are truly bizarre mutation such as legs for antenni (bad spelling).

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Khoas, those were really scary creations, some even have double heads, four wings, mouthparts on the body :spinning:The principle is to insert the gene where one wants it to grow at embryo stage, and it will grow as instructed by the foreign gene.

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For me, instead of growing insects for food, I'd rather attract insects to the plant. What I have done was to put a banana peel near my droseras for example, which attracts fruitflies, and they usually end up on the drosera leaves as food. :)

The only thing that I grow for my CPs, are moina/Daphnias for my utricularia and Aldrovanda, but actually the main purpose for that culture is for my fish collection, I don't feed my water CPs daphnias that often.

TTFN
Arvin

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What about putting it in a glass jar?I have a book about activities that you can do with insects and the "grow your own fruit fly"thing got into my head.I was thinking the larvae because as you know flies are pain in the neck.

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Why not just try and capture some ants? I think all our houses have them. I especially like those small red ants. All I need to do is to take a cloth, wet it, open it up and throw it on top of the ants. They'll be stuck on the cloth fr a while. Then I use tweezers to slowly pick them up and feed them to my Sundews.

The other way is just to collect them outside my apartment at night under ceiling lights. Just carry a bottle with cap, pick them and throw them into the bottle.

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Okay guys,last Sunday I went to the pet shop to get my guinea pig a bottle of shampoo and I asked how much it was for the mealy worms. The shopkeeper said free for me(because I bought my guinea pig suppleis from him).So I popped them in a container.Oh,I just fed my Vft with one of the smaller ones today.They don't crawl fast so it's easy prey.And they feed on bread crumbs.
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Try the mealy worms on your Neps. They will love it. My Neps are fed that every once in a while and I can see a spurt of growth within 2 weeks.

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Free Mealworms, you are lucky. Yeah as David said, feed the smaller ones to your VFTs, the big ones to your Nepenthes. I have tried it few times before but couldn't get many small ones for my VFTs, my brother feeds them to some other pet though so I really didn't do this regularly.

Have fun!

You guys realize that we are Sadists.... we are using our plants as an excuse to kill insects.... not that many would complaint against it... but maybe we should have ourselved checked up by Psychiatrists :(

TTFN
Arvin

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I don't about everyone else but one of the main reasons I got into carnivorous plants because they eat flies, mossies and european wasps. Very slowly.

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Nah,I don't think we like kiling them so NOT an excuse.Mealworms breed so fast.Mine already have small ones crawling around.Okay Vft.........don't look at them like that.

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killing? no big deal, the weak died and strong survive, this is how the world works, it might sounds cruel, but that is the fact

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In fact it help the species by removing the slow, dumb and the weak from the gene pool.

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Yeah it's true, and we all know that.Survival of the fittest?

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I just saw this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zqdnWQXFRo&NR=1

Anyway the expert in the video that meal worms should be avoided because they have a lot of calcium content in them that is not good for CPs. So I guess don't or just feed sparingly.

TTFN
Arvin

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Oookay,what about once a month?

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OH my gosh.One of the meal worm is shedding its skin and turning into beetle.they usually shed and turn into bigger worm but this one is deffinately turning beetle!What do I do?Do they fly?Release it?

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It actually turned into a beetle!Thinking of not killing it.A new pet.Anyone experienced in beetles?
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Don't kill it. Just drop it into one of the pitchers.

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NOT gonna kill it.It looks cute.Anyone knows how to care for beetles?

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Try to keep more than one and you can try to breed your own mealworms:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mealworm