Elodea

Mosquito season has started, and the birdbath in my backyard is teeming with mosquito larvae. No need to say who those future bloodsuckers are for!

Stang Man

Just don't send them my way yet I can feel them coming to my town soon.

gremlin

Don't you just love free fish food?

aquarist48

Good morning,
Mosquito's.....I live on a creek bank. I get eaten alive if I'm not covered in repellent from head to toe. I've even had them to bite me through my clothes. Mosquito larva gives me chills....lol So my birdbaths get Mosquito Dunks. (no larva for me!) Zap! Zap! goes the bug lights.

The thoughts of them in my tank.....not pretty.
Ken

Stang Man

I Know what you mean Texas will be very bad this year been receiving alot of rain just glad we made it out of a drought!!

Atavar

That's why I keep goldfish in my rain barrel.. plus I think fish pee is good for the garden..

Shawnie

I have tried for years to make mosquito larvae for my fish!(great nutrition for them) and I cant seem to do something so easy!!!!!! wonder if they ship live to other places? LOL

Stang Man

Thats a good idea fish pee.Thats to funny!!

Elodea

So anyways, that birdbath is nothing but a shallow pool of water in a very hard to reach place under a tree and some shrubs. The water smells foul, and there are dead leaves everywhere, making it ridiculously difficult to net those mosquito larvae.

Instead (I haven't posted for a week, so this is a bit out of date) I have my mosquito farm up and running. Fed on infusoria, the mosquito larvae are now in a large, covered jar (county law states that any uncovered jars aren't allowed, so mine's covered).

Its full of larvae and pupae. The pupae will choke the fish, instead, they're like the reproductives. The biggest current problem is how to get the female mosquito blood she needs to lay the eggs. Maybe collect some the next time I get a bloody nose? LOL

Stang Man

You cali's don't have skeeters!!!! How would you know bout them skeeters any way!!!!

cm11599ps

Can I have more info on this? How to do you go about collecting them and putting them in the tank. I lknow nothing about this.

gremlin

A very fine net. Cheese cloth works as does some of the lighter cotton dress material (if you happen to sew and have some leftover pieces).

cm11599ps

Do you just scoop them out with the net and then put them right in your tank? Do you keep them in something else before putting them in the tank?

Elodea

I keep them in a large gallon jar (my pathetic but highly efficient "farm"). Before, I would scoop the mosquitoes from that stinking birdbath, so I could monitor the water quality and make sure that nothing nasty is falling into the water that my fish food grows in.

Gen. 1 skeeters are out. Despite a few floating bits of wood I have put in the jar, the mosquitoes cling onto the sides of the jar. When spooked, they fly around like crazy and try to land back on the walls of the jar, but far too many times I have seen them land right in the water and drown themselves.

I take the dead mosquitoes and plop them in the fish tank, and my fish seem to like them quite a bit. Seeing a danio trying to gulp down a huge female mosquito reminded me a bit of a python eating a rabbit or something. Later, I found one of the kuhli loaches sucking on something. At first, I though it was a bit of my Amano shrimps (and I panicked), but it turned out to be a mosquito wing! Ack, my fish are such messy eaters.

Apparently, these mosquitoes do not need to drink blood to lay eggs (to my relief), because I see a whole bunch of tiny mosquito larvae wriggling inside the water. Hopefully, this'll provide my fish a constant flow of live food coming in (they eat mosquitoes twice to three times a week).

cm11599ps

So how do you go about getting the dead guys out and not letting them live ones escape?


May sound silly, but what about putting a bucket under your bag zapper for collecting them?

Elodea

I don't have a bug zapper, personally, I'm an inspiring entomologist (and fishkeeper), and don't want to kill other insects. Since the jar's covered with a plastic wrap, I take of the rubber band securing it to the mouth of the jar, and carefully, while holding the plastic wrap in place, slip a chopstick underneath, and use it to pick up a dead mosquito (they're soggy, so they stick to the chopstick). Then I quickly lift the plastic wrap enough to slip out the chopstick, and voila!

Once I actually let a mosquito out, but then I swatted it immediately (gotta be responsible, you know). Then into the fish tank he went!

Elodea

UPDATE:

Population of mosquito farm has increased drastically to maybe 50 larvae and 20 pupae. All adults are dead (and eaten).

This is due to a new method of harvesting the larvae:

1. Grab a net and make a massive scoop into the rotting leaves and stuff floating in the birdbath.

2. Hold your nose (rotting leaves smell NASTY)

3. Dump the contents of the net onto the ground.

4. Although mosquito larvae and pupae are very fast and agile underwater, they are helpless on land. If you're not squeamish, pick through the gunk with your bare hands and collect mosquito larvae and pupae at leisure, then quickly pick them up and drop them in the jar.

Mortality rate of larvae during collection and "transportation": 5%

Mortality rate of pupae during collection and "transportaion": 8%

5. When all the larvae and pupae have been collected into the farm, take a hose and wash away the rotten, nasty-smelling leaves and stuff.