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Odd trade- my carnivorous plants for your partial fossil fish


Fishkeeper

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Edit: as thanks to @caldigger for donating some fossils, I'll be sending some of these plants to anyone who wants some. Just post here or PM. 

 

Not sure if this sort of trade is even allowed, but here goes.

I'm looking for some partial fish fossils, not yet cleaned off, that I can practice preparation on. By "partial" I mean broken in half, missing heads or tails, or otherwise not intact, though preferably not ones where the matrix around them is shattered and there's no way to clean them off without ending up with the fish mostly in loose flakes. 

I don't have any good fossils to trade, but I do have Venus flytraps. They're not hard to keep if you know what you're doing- minerals and fertilizers are toxic to them and they need very strong sunlight. You pot them in sphagnum moss (like people put orchids in), and you give them rainwater, distilled water, or RO water. To get them enough light, you keep them outdoors. Put 'em in a pot (not clay, it has minerals), set the pot in a shallow dish of safe water to keep the moss lightly moist, and that's it. They go dormant in the winter, and you just leave them outside for that unless you live in a part of the world where it's cold enough that the pot would freeze solid for days on end. If it's that cold, you bring them inside somewhere, like into a garage, to keep them a bit warmer. They divide while dormant, so they'll multiply, and they can get up to 5" tall with some very nice coloration inside the traps. They catch bugs on their own, but you can feed them bugs if you want, just don't give them meat. 

I also have babies of an orchid called Lepanthes gargoyla, which is a neat little orchid that's pretty easy to grow in terrariums. Place it in a terrarium with the roots tied to something that stays wet, something like a bundle of moss on a ranch, give it indirect sunlight or some sort of artificial light, keep the root anchor damp and the humidity fairly high around it, and watch it grow. Needs to be a terrarium at least 8" tall so it has room to sprawl once it starts growing the long, pendant leaves that flower.

 

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The flytrap pot I'd be pulling from. They aren't fully grown yet. I also have some baby plants with much brighter red inside the traps. 

 

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That sprawling purple plant is the orchid. It has a ton of leaves tucked up behind the red bromeliad at the top, that's just to keep it from getting light-burned. This is a flowering size adult, the babies are all pretty small, and I don't know how long it'll take them to grow to this size. Once it does hit this size, though, it sprouts off babies pretty regularly from off the ends of the flowering-leaf stems.

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DANG! I definitely would have done this trade, but sadly we are on different continents :P I am an orchid grower too, just Australian stuff though. Bummer :(

Btw, whats that little bulbophyllum in the last pic?

 

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Nice eye. That's a Bulbophyllum alagense "large form". I have it split into two batches, one here and one mounted on kind of a living wall arrangement outside a terrarium. The other batch is larger and has flowered once, about 10 tiny flowers scattered through the clump. This batch hasn't flowered and is getting a bit buried under the liverworts, but seems to be growing well, so maybe it'll flower when it gets larger? I can't really get it out, it's growing on Hygrolon, so even if it never flowers I'm not going to remove it as long as it doesn't start dying off. It looks pretty healthy. 

I have more pics of a bunch of orchids, mostly miniature to micro, on my imgur account here. Also some really spectacular Venus flytraps, though I'm not trading those, I'm gonna try and get them to divide. https://fishkeeper.imgur.com/all/

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4 minutes ago, Fishkeeper said:

Nice eye. That's a Bulbophyllum alagense "large form". I have it split into two batches, one here and one mounted on kind of a living wall arrangement outside a terrarium. The other batch is larger and has flowered once, about 10 tiny flowers scattered through the clump. This batch hasn't flowered and is getting a bit buried under the liverworts, but seems to be growing well, so maybe it'll flower when it gets larger? I can't really get it out, it's growing on Hygrolon, so even if it never flowers I'm not going to remove it as long as it doesn't start dying off. It looks pretty healthy. 

I have more pics of a bunch of orchids, mostly miniature to micro, on my imgur account here. Also some really spectacular Venus flytraps, though I'm not trading those, I'm gonna try and get them to divide. https://fishkeeper.imgur.com/all/

Very cool. :envy:

Most of my stuff is dormant, so I'll take some pics when they flower next year. 

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Tell you what...I have a couple of fish partials if you want them. I have no need for the plants as my place is very dark and I have no outside space to put them. I will donate the fish plates to you and if someone wants the plants, you can send to them in proxy for my "trade".

 

 

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5 hours ago, JohnBrewer said:

You live in a cave Doren......?

Practically! My living room only has a small "porthole" window up high so it stays pretty dark. And the other windows are at mid level and everyone can see in so the draperies stay shut. Absolutely no privacy otherwise.

It's a man cave, okay!

 

 

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I had the opportunity to collect fish at Sseth's quarry in Kemmerer, Wy this summer.   Kept many broken fish with the intent to donate to the local fossil sand pit. But after working with my specimens, I decided not to bury them in the sand due to their fragility. The park manager did not want them if they would not be placed in the pit. I offer them to you, but you must know, the fish here need little to no prepping. I can scrounge through the pieces and see if some require a bit of prep. As with Caldigger, I need no plants. they can be given to anyone that would like a bit of your greenery.

 

Mike

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2 hours ago, caldigger said:

Come on Mike, get one and you can call it Audrey ( Little Shop of Horrors).

"FEED ME"

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That's awesome, thank you! Are you sure you don't want a couple plants?

I also have sundews, which are a bit easier to care for than the flytraps. No dormancy needed, and you can grow them inside in a sunny window. They're great for eating fruit flies. 

These are Cape sundews. The ones I have available are 2-3" across, but they grow very fast. They can be potted in either sphagnum moss or a mix of rinsed sphagnum peat and perlite, and I can send enough media to start you off. They still need rainwater, distilled water, or RO water. Care for these guys is really simple- put them in a sunny window, keep them in a shallow tray of water so the soil stays constantly damp, and let them catch bugs. You can also feed them freeze-dried bloodworms (fish food), or temporarily put them near a trash can or fruit bowl to feed them. They can go outside in summer, but should come inside before it freezes or they'll die back to the roots and will have to re-grow. 

If anyone wants some, I can put some live sphagnum moss in with the sundew media, it'll grow just fine in there. 

Here's a pic, and you can google "Drosera capensis" if the pic doesn't show up. The ones in the top of the picture are "alba", a variety with white dew, and the ones in the bottom are regular ones with pink dew. They flower readily once mature, self-pollinate the flowers, and scatter easy-to-grow seeds.

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The nepenthes in the left of the pic is an unknown hybrid, the grower was selling it as a "whoops we lost the tag and can't be certain of the ID, we'll just sell this cheap" plant. The one to the right is N. sanguinea. 

Cute little unknown: 

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Sanguinea (w/ ventrata in the background): 

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Found out taking this pic that N. sanguinea secretes nectar all along those frills as well as under the lid. Got my hand all sticky. This pitcher is about 5" from base to lid, and the plant is currently putting out a larger one. 

DiUR7exl.jpg

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I too grow Nepenthes, 

Here is N maxima x (singalana x boschiana)

very interesting to grow, a little more complicated than flytraps and sundews though. Great for anyone who enjoys taxonomy. Lots of unusually similar species.

D773A742-0D12-474F-9672-039AB75BC7BF.jpeg

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Lovely! Dark speckles are really nice on Nepenthes. 

 

I stick with easier species. They stay in a tray of water, I mist them now and then, and that's it. Might get a bit tougher when they get bigger and stop easily fitting in with the rest. I'm not offering them for trade because I don't have any babies at the moment, mine aren't big enough for cuttings. 

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Wow, this is cool. When I was in grad school back in the 70's, I used to collect and raise insectivorous plants, including Venus flytraps, various pitcher plants and sundews.  Fun to see someone doing it now. Thanks for showing them.  

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Wow I wouldn't hesitate to do a trade with you for plants like that as I use to own a huge Nepenthes x ventrata and x Miranda. The only problem for me is that I don't carry partial fish fossils. Nice plants by the way!

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I don't have any baby Nepenthes, but, if you want Venus flytraps and/or Cape sundews, I'll gladly trade some. Do you have anything else that would be decent prep practice? Trilobites or similar still in matrix, either durable specimens or broken ones that are fine to potentially damage further? 

I'd also take something interesting from your part of the world that doesn't tend to show up anywhere else. For something especially neat, I can include enough media to pot up whatever I'm trading you. If you have something you'd be up for trading for some flytraps, sundews, or a couple of baby orchids, please PM me, I have a ton of these. 

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Mine are in the post as well, (Had trouble finding a suitable box).  Your plants look awesome, however I have the brownest thumb in history when it comes to plants and I would only end up killing it.

 

 

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Again, thank you both so much! I'll put a couple pics up whenever they get cleaned off. 

 

To everyone else, the offer is still open: free plants! Take a quick look at the care, and, if you want some, lemme know. They're a bit specific, but very hardy if you give them what they want. The Venus flytraps are definitely outdoor plants, the sundews are indoor or outdoor plants, the orchids need a terrarium to stay wet enough but it could just be a big jar. 

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Just got both packages in the mail, thanks once again! Some of these are really neat- there's a tiny minnow in here, less than 2" long, that's in pretty good shape aside from a chip missing. A couple of thinner plates snapped in the mail, but I figure I can just use those as gluing practice, so nbd. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hey Fishkeeper. Have been wanting to get back into CP for a couple of years. Belonged to ICPN back in the 80s. If you still have spare plants I'm interested and will send you fossils from the Cape Fear Region in return. PM if still available. thanks!

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

I guess I will be the first to take you up on some of your free plants.  I just started a carnivorous garden last March and it did amazingly well!  I've got some Sarracenia minor, Drosera filiformis which is dividing like crazy, and some other diminutive Drosera mixed in.  I'll take any and all that you're willing to part with.  I don't have any fish fossils here in Central Texas, but I've got a ton of Hemiaster texanus that could be used for prep practice if you want.  Let me know!

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