Re: Feeding pings and drosera

peter cole (peter@bunyip.demon.co.uk)
Wed, 21 Sep 1994 15:17:46 GMT

ON: Tue, 20 Sep 94 12:47:19 +0100
"Paul Temple" <temple_p@bst.dec.com> WROTE
CONCERNING Re: Feeding pings and drosera

>Steve
>
>If you're growing Pings well they won't need hewlp with feed.
>
>Generally Pings catch all they need in the form of Gnats or similarly
>sized flies. If your plants are looking sickly, feeding them might
>actually push them over the edge!
>
>On the other hand, if you really feel the necessity to feed and if
>you're sadistic in your private life (we'd all like to know more), then
>you can feed Pings any fly that isn't big enough to crawl off (e.g.
>house flies or bluebottle are too strong and generally struggle free).
>Of course you can stun the large flies first but this is an art
>(difficulty akin to any martial art) where you have to stun the fly
>sufficiently to prevent them recoving before digestion has progressed,
>as opposed to splattering the fly (in which case too much nutrient is
>lost to make it a worthwhile food).

I often seem to get a lot of dead flies around my ( indoor, ) plants
( coniine poisoning from Sarracenias I guess? ) and occasionally one
fetches up on a Ping. In my experience if these aren't promptly
removed you quickly get a large ball of mould around the fly which
starts to kill the leaf. Anyone any experience of this, or can yours
digest prey the size of house flies?
An alternative would be to scrounge some fruit flies from the genetics
dep't of your nearest university ( they always have a surplus, ) and
apply some of these.

good growing,

peter

|~) _ |_ _ _ | PETER COLE | formerly: peter@empyr.dircon.co.uk
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