The Daughter Replies

lol. Well, you probably could feed them tarantulas. But don't they exude some attractant substance that affects certain insects, so the insects would not want to leave?

What you need is flies. Tarantula breeders sometimes used to attract house flies in order to breed maggots, using various substances. Rino used rotting raw liver. I promise you I will not send you a maggot-infested piece of rotting raw liver; okay?

Otherwise, you can buy a culture of wingless fruit flies from Carolina Biological Supply for $6.95 plus shipping. That's what we used to do when we were raising some kinds of very small arthropods. Or hit a pet store and see what kinds of crickets they have available. Crickets are easy to lame; I've done it lots of times. You can usually buy a dozen for maybe a couple of dollars. This may not work because of the border, though.

Or you could put the plants inside a container the insects can't get out of, and see if eventually the plants get the insects that way.

Googling a bit, I note that at least one person thinks wingless fruit flies are a great food for carnivorous plants. Also, here's a post about how you can buy canned crickets or canned caterpillars and use those as food. You can freeze the rest after you open the can. In fact, freezing is a classic way to kill insects for various entomological reasons. If you did this in the warm months, you'd have food for later.

For that matter, we used to sometimes just chop up raw beef and feed that to tarantulas. Generally speaking though it's best to stick with something that more or less resembles the natural food sources.

mro