OT - Venus Fly Traps

[RB211]

I have a venus fly trap, just wondering if anyone else on this forum grows carnivorous plants?
I am wondering if my city water is pure enough for these plants? San Francisco.

[Liger Zero]

Do what I do for my tropical fish: Let the water sit out for at least 48 to 72 hours to allow the chlorine to break down.

Now as for feeding your Trap... do NOT give it hamburger, that'll kill it. Wrong sort of proteins I was told, also the plant cannot digest it all the way.

Feed it small live meal-worms, cricket pieces and other assorted bugs that you find.

The one I have gets an occasional ant off the kitchen floor... for some reason we get these GIGANTIC ants the size of a dime in the winter. Flytrap loves them.

[Evan]

Go across to Berkeley and get a jug full of water there. It used to be some of the best water to be found in a city. All the water in the East Bay Municipal Utilities District ( East Bay MUD) came from the Sierras when I grew up there.

[Duffy]

I have a Butterwort that is surviving on my windowsill. I have also transplanted Pitcherplants from the bogs around here. They would last, if transplanted in a large chunk of native "muck" in a plastic container, about three years. Sundews also grow in these bogs. The problem associated with most of these carniverous plants is that they DEMAND almost pure, slightly acid water, (rain from a reasonably unpoluted sky!)
The Pitcherplants suffered as the pH slowly rose over time and they just sort of faded away. I think that it is very difficult to have these plants actually THRIVE; they just seem to die very slowly and we assume that their lifespan is short.
A healty orchid, for example, has a realistic life expectancy of many decades. Most people are happy with a few years.

[Thruthefence]

Apparently these things evolved for bad soil conditions. My wife killed our batch by dosing the soil with 'miracle grow'.

ODed on fertilizer!

[Optics Curmudgeon]

We have a venus in our kitchen that's lasted 8 years now, it gets watered with distilled water only. Tap water killed the last one in less than a year. They can go a long time without any external proteins, just by photosynthesis. Ours gets only what it catches, flies and ants in the summer but not much the rest of the year. We just water it.

Joe

[Liger Zero]

. Ours gets only what it catches, flies and ants in the summer but not much the rest of the year. We just water it.

Joe

Half the fun of owning one is getting to re-enact scenes from Little Shop Of Horrors as you feed it.

[Black_Moons]

Remember, Its allways easyer to correct under fertilization and underwatering then it is OVER fertilization/watering.

And just like humans, Too much of a good thing WILL kill it. And very easily slow its growth. If anything, plants tend to do better under thier optimial zone then over. They just take it as a personal challange to surive.

[Dunc]

Sci Fi

One of the British Avengers TV shows (the original, not the "New") from the late 70s or early 80s maybe had a typical deranged scientist who collected carnivorous plants but modified them so they became gigantic - trees - and of course were intended to suitably dispose of his enemies.

Nice what if scenario...