mosquito larva

[Meredith]

I am trying to grow out some aponogeton bulbs outside in a thing of water and I noticed that I have some mosquito larva swimming around. Is it safe to feed these guys to my fish? How long do I have before the turn into adults?

 

[krap101]

personally i dont like taking the risk of growing mosquito larvae. i successfully have done it and my fish love them (but the larvae dont go down low enough for the bottom fish) if you put in a pretty powerful air stone for awhile it'll circulate the water enough to push them to the bottom.

for the turning into adults, id say around a week. i never was able to safely do it since you never can get every mosquito... im thinking about putting like a 5 gallon bucket outside so i can pour all the water into a net so they wont have any chance to grow to the adult stage.

my story is last summer (around) i put a 50 gallon bucket outside. i faithfully sweeped through every day with a brine shrimp net. one day i went to do it and when i put the net in around 20 mosquitos flew out. you could try emptying the water every day and putting new water in... but theres not a good % for you to get all of them..

 

[mr86mister]

wow, i wish i could do that around here...its now considered illegal and you will have a fine with any standing water, people even have to wash out their bird baths daily to keep the mosquito population down

this of course is because of EEE (Eastern Equine Encephalitis) and West Nile Virus which i'm sure most people from the Northeast and other places have heard about *we're just having a bad problem with it the past few years*

 

[krap101]

what i think of doing wouldnt be illegal. because you try and empty out the bucket into a net to get the larvae and fill it back up with water. if you know you wont be able to be home for awhile just empty it and put it upside down for awhile. when you get home you can just fill it and wait like a day. (i mean awhile as in a couple days where you wont be able to harvest them

 

[fantasticaqua]

Meredith,
Remember, you always run the risk of transfering disease into your tanks when you add a new organism or water.

 

[jrp1588]

If you empty it daily...Don't mosquitoes only lay eggs in dirty water? Also, surely it takes them a few days to get big enough to be worth feeding to the fish.

 

[krap101]

fill it with tank water?

 

[Voodoo Chilli]

I usually do this in the summer. It's very important to either remove ALL the larvae every day or dump the container and add fresh water: you don't want adult mosquitoes around your house.

I pour the larvae into a net and then rinse them with clean water before adding them to the tank. The benefits of live foods cannot be overstated, but you do want to be careful and diligent if you do pursue this food source.

 

[Meredith]

I just decided to dump them out. I don't want to introduce anything weird into my tank.