Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Mosquito Fish

These are mosquito fish, so named because they really go after the mosquito larvae! I was looking at my pond and wondered what all of the little, tiny "sticks" were in my pond. They looked like part of my compost, but I don't have compost around the pond at this time. I went to pick up a couple of the "sticks" to see what they were, and they wiggled away. Suddenly, it dawned on me that they were mosquito larvae, and there were a lot of them! My husband called the city(mosquito abatement), who very willingly will supply us with these fish. It is part of the city's plan to keep the mosquito population down. It seems that this year, at least in my neighborhood, we have very big mosquitoes, something we haven't seen before. They aren't from my pond, as this started before I got it, but I don't want to contribute to the population.
This was a cute picture of mosquito fish eating mosquito larvae--don't the larvae look like sticks? It's said that one adult fish can eat 100 larvae each day! If you run out of larvae, then you can feed the fish regular tropical fish food, just don't use too much or you will create a problem of too much organic matter in your pond. I am suppose to get my fish today--I don't even have to be home!--and there will be just enough fish for my size pond. Mosquito larvae problem gone!

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