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I have always used black mosquito larvaes as food during summer periods where they are plenty awailable in my different small water pots in my garden. I catch them before they have got too big, but now I have found a really good way to get them so small I can even feed tiny fry with them. So I will give this good idea on to all you good paro people with hungry paroes 🙂
Someone once told me that you can find the black mosquito larvae eggs before they actually hatch if you look for some small things in the water where you normally find the larvaes. In lack of what to call this I will enter an image 🙂 ..
It looks like this :
In this image you can actually see that ‘the thing’ consist of eggs, and I have found that if I take this or more, and gently fishes them up from the water they are found in together with water from this same source, into a smaller container and then leave it there after some days I have a small container full of tiny tiny black mosquito larvaes. You can also see some of these in the first picture.
I will put in a picture here to show more of the container I keep it in, and there you might also get an impression of the actual size it has. Its just a small ceramic flower pot. These egg things are quite small and I had never noticed these before. One such thing would be maybe half a cm long
It does however take some days before the tiny mosquito larvaes are actually big enough to be fed to grown paroes 🙂 – but thats not a problem …
Thank you for this interesting tip Helene!
While collecting some larves in the garden bucket this evening, I recognised two so called things and have dropped one in a bowl with water from the bucket. I hope to get the same result as you in couple of days.
It usually takes me about 10-15 minutes to collect black mosquito larves: staring at the bucket and catching the ones that raise to the water surface :blink:
Would there be a method to stimulate them, showing up faster from the bottom towards the surface?
Best regards,
S.I dont have any tips regarding how to get them to surface quicker – except maybe to have more buckets 🙂
I have a few buckets – four regular and the small pools of water that can occur anywhere in the garden, so when I tjeck them I go from one to the other, and by the time I come back to no one bucket the larvaes have surfaced again. …
In that way I dont have to stay and wait untill they come up 🙂
Or I do other things in the meantime, just having a small container for the catched larvaes that I can continue to fill up and everytime I pass during the day I get the net ..I am not sure how many days the ‘thing’ takes before it develops, thats something I yet need to find out, but now you might be able to learn that
God luck with the ‘hunting’A more shallow container than a normal bucket would be easier to harvest larvae from, and supposedly they prefer shallower containers to lay their eggs in.
I swirl a brine shrimp net around in a bucket that looks like it has no larvae, and always end up with many small larvae in the net to supplement the artemia I feed. They are not much bigger then the artemia.The egg clusters of mosquitos are called rafts.They are great as it is almost like a slow release live food.
Mosquito larvae (mainly Culex spec., but there are new genera invading the western hemisphere now in the course of climate change) are since long known as very good food for our fish if not too big (as Helene told in the opening mail). The special quality is seen by the fact that this food leads the females to develop a good stock of eggs (which is nearly impossibe with Daphnia spec., for instance). And the tiny forms that come out of the rafts are since long known as a very good food for raising our offspring.
Malaria mosquitos (Anopheles spec.) look very similar and obviously spread to formerly colder climate ranges, too. They have been found recently quite often in Germany among Culex where they were totally absent in former times. They are readily taken by our fish, too. Up to now, a danger of getting infected with Malaria in our countries has not been reported.
There are two things that are not widely known. The first (that was even new to me) is the knowledge of our experienced friend Bernd Bussler (from Hamburg) that you can find them even in Winter at special places. Bernd is a hard-working catcher of live outdoor food even when most ponds are frozen; and his success with breeding all Parosphromenus is widely recognized and acclaimed. The other thing is that you could store the rafts in the refrigerator for quite a long time without water. If placed at the water surface of an aquarium they will soon hatch and produce that tiny food that was spoken about. By this means you can store quite a mass of rafts in the autumn and use it in winter for your offspring.
Thank you, Kevin, – so now they have a name ‘rafts’ 🙂
And thats really interesting, Peter, what Bernd have told you, – in fact in may have been him that gave me the tip long time ago. But I never heard about putting them in the fridge, that must be tried of course.
Of course, I was thinking yesterday that if you leave them in whatever bucket or container you have, they will develop there as well for you to catch, – and I do also get lots o small by just using the net, but often then also get a lot of other things along, leaves etc. So I found it a lot easier to have them seperated.
I once put one in the tank, the only thing that wasnt so good about this, was that the fish probably ate the tiny larvaes before they were so big that I could actually see them, so it was hard to tell what happened 🙂
When they just hatch they are in a way almost too small for adult fish and you get too little ‘value’ out of it 🙂[quote=”helene” post=2326]
I am not sure how many days the ‘thing’ takes before it develops, thats something I yet need to find out, but now you might be able to learn that
God luck with the ‘hunting'[/quote]Yesterday, I’ve discovered the first larvae in my bowl since I had put the raft in it. So it took about 2 days. Using a pipette, I harvested small larvaes for the 2 young couples P. ornaticauda that I had introduced in a well planted 20l. tank last Saturday. They seemed to be very pleased. It was the 1st time they showed up all 4 of them. In the previous days I had been anxiously searching them. After being feed, they behaviour looked very territorial.
I’ll continue collecting rafts 🙂 that’s for sure.
I am very glad to hear your good experience, – thats mine too, that these larvae are very good when you want to count your fish 🙂 ..also the fry. It brings the fish out.
But I was just thinking, – actually you cant really say that it takes two days, because you dont know when your particular raft was produced, – and how long it had been in the water before you took it 🙂 …
It may have been there for many days really 🙂they make excellent fish food. However you should be careful when collecting them. they prefer standing shallow dirty water, which makes also an ideal habitat for bacteria that can make you :sick: . so make sure you wash the larvae and your hands thoroughly.
A bunch of rafts have appeared in one of the outside tubs that I use as live food sources. They weren’t there ysterday evening. I’ve collected some and have put them in a separate, small, container filled with their original water. I’ll observe and let you know when they start to hatch : it’s very hot here at the moment (c30C) so presumably hatching will be accelerated?
I can confirm that zillions of tiny larvae have exited from the egg-rafts (had to use a magnifying-glass, though!).
So hatching occurs in less than 24hrs at c30C.
🙂 Thats quite interesting. Good work !
Maybe the temperature is quite significant, – I at least remember having had the experience that it took several days for one raft to develop.
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