Day Four 24/03/06

Not much change today. It looks like at least four caterpillers will be turning soon. i have added some driftwood to the tank so that there is something for them to hang from. I have noticed that they are all quite happy to eat the pumpkin but they definately do prefer the Swan Plant. The eggs that I have found have seemed not to have hatched. One caterpiller died today.

Day Three 23/03/06

Have noticed that as the bigger caterpillers are eating the pumpkin their stripes are become more of an orange colour rather than the usual yellow. Im still feeding them both swanplant & pumpkin.

Day Two 22/03/06

Found another 2 eggs and 1 caterpiller. All munching on both pumpkin & Swan Plant leaves, apart from the real little ones are sticking only to the swan plant leaves. Am assuming this is due to their digestive system not being able to process the pumpkin yet.

Day One 21/03/06

Today after the area was set up & the caterpillers settled in I added both Swan plant & pumkin as there are varying sizes of caterpillers. So far they have favoured the Swan plant but I did notice one small one having a nibble on the pumpkin. (See attached photos.)

The Setup

The reason for starting this was to see if infact monarch caterpillers ate/preferred pumkin in comparison to Swan plant/Milkweed. I set up an aquarium with paper towels on the bottom & added 32 Monarch Caterpillers and One egg from my outside swan plant. The cover is of glad wrap with some perferated holes made by a fork.
The main reason behind this was because the swan plant had become infested with yellow aphids . The swan plant has since been cleaned with water so that it has a chance to recouperate.