Mosquito Larva as treat for fish?

[DazzleDiscus]

I've read in a couple of really old aquarium books that feeding mosquito larva from ponds/ditches is a good food supplement. What kind of chance is there of introducing a parasite/disease to the fish? I'm not talking of blackworms, which I have been told are another type of mosquito larva, just the ones that can be found everywhere and turn into those nasty flying biting machines.

[celticfish]

only the females feed on blood.
they are actually very nutritious (read as fattening) for conditioning of fish.
the old books describe what is common practice then (my dad did it when he was young).
likelyhood of infecting fishes is very low.

today with worldwide knowledge of malaria and other nasties carried by these buggers mean they are not condoned.
personally i believe you can "culture" them responsibly.

example - use a can that has a netting over it.
next fill it with water to the brim and put it in the garden.
watch for evaporation and wait for lavae and harvest.

having said the above.
sometimes they can survive in your tank when the fish miss it.
have that happen too often and you won't be too popular with your neighbours!

btw they are way better in nutrition than bloodworms.
don't believe?
just squish one as see what comes out and compare it to the watery texture of bloodworms.
see the old folks know a thing or two!

[bryan]

Your fish will really be hooked on them. I doubt the larve will last 2 minutes. Do note they take about 2 weeks to develop into bloodsuckers. Just be careful they don't end up in the sump. Only time I'd ever experienced mosquitoe larve infestation was when I kept a tank of channa outdoors. There is actually such a thing as food being too small for the fish

[cairocks]

I had a bad experience once and will only feed to fishes with a bare bottom tank. Once, I poured in a small container containing a few mosquito larva into my planted tank and noticed one or two of the larva swim very quickly into the moss bottom and took cover while the fishes settled the other more blur ones. A couple of days later, while I was looking at my tank, I saw something swam upwards from the tank and floated on the surface. After a few seconds, I went over to investigate and found that a mosquito had broken out of that shell and resting on the surface , maybe waiting for the wings to strengthen before flying off. Somehow the fishes ignored it. Luckily I saw it a destroy it immediately. But I do not know if there are any more hiding inside my moss jungle. From then onwards, I only feed mosquitoes larva to my betta which are in bare bottom tanks.

[DazzleDiscus]

Thank you all for giving me your feedback! I'll try it out - and make sure that they eat all of them. Thanks again.

[spyder79]

it dangerous as what i will say if you don keep a look out , it may become your worst nightmare .

[DazzleDiscus]

I don't plan on feeding them to the fish every day, probably not even every week. I'll screen them for other insects as I don't want any glass worms or such in the tank. If I see that some of the larva has passed the eyes of the fish, I'll just vacuum the gravel. I'm probably going to try it out this week. I'll let ya know how it goes.

[Ah_ZhaN]

How's it going for the larva feeding ?

I do have mosquitoes flying into my room in the hostel sometimes, but I can't find any breeding spots. Nevertheless, I am feeding pinheads(baby crickets) to my fish, especially bettas. It seems pretty addictive too.

[DazzleDiscus]

Yes I did try it! It was very entertaining to watch the cardinal tetras fight over them. As far as I could tell everyone got some, including the corydoras. I didn't see any of the mosquito larva go to waste, but I vacuumed some of the gravel to be sure. No larva came out.
Another subject: Do you buy the crickets or catch them from outside? I live deep in the woods and have no trouble finding any.

[XnSdVd]

Alternatively, you can feed them newly moulted mealworms. The higher levels of chitin in the mealworms is used in the production of scales on fish.

[valice]

How's it going for the larva feeding ?

I do have mosquitoes flying into my room in the hostel sometimes, but I can't find any breeding spots. Nevertheless, I am feeding pinheads(baby crickets) to my fish, especially bettas. It seems pretty addictive too.

So they do feed on them? Did you try on other fishes? Wonder if my apistoes will take to them.
Sounds like a new source of live foods.

[Ah_ZhaN]

DazzleDiscus;
Great! In Singapore, I think breeding mosquitoe is consider illegal and might get fined for it.

Regarding the crickets, I got my supply from local lfs - Eco Culture, which is supposed to be meant for the white tree frog. The reason why I buy is because I want small-size crickets(pinheads) so as to facilitate the consumption by small fish. It will be too tedious to catch them because they are as small as ants, and they jump.


XnSdVd;
Mealworms seems to be too large for the smaller fish(i.e apistoes, bettas etc). Perhaps for fishes around >4"?


valice;
Yup, they will snap at it. I tried dumping some pinheads into my neighbour's tank which consist of a farhaka puffer and lots of zebra danios. The danios actually snatched them all in no time.

If you're bored of regular tubifex and bloodworm, you can give this baby crickets a try. Even my sub-adult betta tussyae(1 inch+) will swallow without hesitation.

[DazzleDiscus]

DazzleDiscus;
Great! In Singapore, I think breeding mosquitoe is consider illegal and might get fined for it.

Wow! Do you have any trouble with diseases from them like malaria?
We have alot of ponds and wetlands around here- there's absolutlely no problem finding them! Yet we don't have any outbreaks of diseases from them... yet.

[valice]

We don't really have a problem with malaria. But what we have is dengue fever. It can cause internal bleeding if not discovered early and results in deaths.

There was a pretty severe outbreak in Singapore a couple of years ago, causing deaths to over a hundred over people.

[DazzleDiscus]

...disturbing. I can see why it would be illegal to breed them!