Hola Manuel,
Bienvenido a nuestro grupo. Hay muchas personas muy amables aqui, y con
mucho conocimiento del sujeto. Yo estoy seguro de que tu lo vas a
disfrutar aqui.
I think it is important to feed VFTs animal matter (spiders and insects,
not pieces of beef or liver) especially if you keep them indoors and
they don't have the opportunity to catch their own food. The important
thing to remember is to make sure the prey fits entirely within the trap
and makes an airtight seal, if half the body or a wing or leg sticks
out, it creates a perfect path for molds, fungus and bacteria, and most
likely the prey will rot and the whole leaf will do the same as well.
Live prey will automatically trigger the trap halves to close tightly
and begin digestion, dead prey will not. If you feed the plant dead
prey you must use gentle pressure and squeeze the trap leaves together
for about 30 seconds after the trap closes, this will usually be enough
to trigger the digestive process in that trap.
As far as how often to feed them, I feed every trap on a plant a few
days after it opens, and I usually will only feed a particular trap once
in its lifetime, if you feed the same trap more than once it will
eventually overload on a meal as it reaches the end of its life and will
rot. It also greatly reduces the lifespan of a particular leaf,
digestion takes a lot of energy. Since there usually is no strong
breeze indoors, you'll have to use a pair of tweezers to remove the dry
prey husks from the traps when they reopen, otherwise they can also be a
breeding ground for infection. Feeding Venus flytraps is of tremendous
benefit to the plants, the size and growth rate will increase
astronomically.
Some people say you should cut off the flower buds to add vigor to the
plant, but I've found that while feeding versus not feeding shows a
substantial difference in the results I get from identical plants,
cutting off flower buds has at least for me shown no difference in the
strength or health of my plants, and since I like the flowers I let all
my plants keep them. The added advantage is that you have to pollinate
VFT flowers by hand indoors to produce seed, unlike the self-pollinating
D. capensis, so you can let the plants flower without having to worry
about thousands of VFTs showing up all over the place!
Regards,
Demetrios