Heart Generators and using non-heart statues

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I'm currently making heart generators by using jellyfish spawners and a spikeball trap to create hearts, but the jellies don't appear to be dropping hearts. Do I have to use heart statues for this to work now? I was hoping to avoid the heart statue cooldown

Edit: The hearts spawn at a decent rate it seems, but now I'm having the issue that I am moving too fast durring the fight, and I can't actually get the hearts, they just fly past me