Live Food from Pools
- Thread starter Robinhud
- Start date
chriscoli
Administrator
I suspect they'd love them. Frank even keeps kiddie pools of daphnia for his fish.
mchambers
Former CCA member
I don't think there's any significant health risk. I'd feed them.
They should be a great food for your fish. Not sure I would like to live near you if most of them are not fed to your fish since there would be a lot of mosquitoes flying nearby. The only other problem is dragonfly larvae, which can only be a problem in a fry tank. Big fish will eat dragon fly larvae too.
One other problem occurs if you overfeed mosquito larvae and not all the mosquito larvae are eaten and then emerge as flying mosquitoes in you fish room and home.
Perhaps you should culture daphnia in your pool. If you get a good dense daphnia culture growing in the pool then female mosquitoes will not lay their eggs there and you will not be raising mosquitoes in your pond. Apparently female mosquitoes can smell whether the water has enough nutrients to support their babies. But the daphnia culture must be going well for this to happen. Decaying leaves and other decaying stuff are what is feeding the mosquito larvae (or daphnia).
BTW blood worm larvae look much like mosquito larvae and in this area you are likely to have both. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chironomidae The flies from blood worm larvae look like mosquito larvae but do not fly away when you see them on a structure, so you can easily kill them compared to mosquitoes.
One other problem occurs if you overfeed mosquito larvae and not all the mosquito larvae are eaten and then emerge as flying mosquitoes in you fish room and home.
Perhaps you should culture daphnia in your pool. If you get a good dense daphnia culture growing in the pool then female mosquitoes will not lay their eggs there and you will not be raising mosquitoes in your pond. Apparently female mosquitoes can smell whether the water has enough nutrients to support their babies. But the daphnia culture must be going well for this to happen. Decaying leaves and other decaying stuff are what is feeding the mosquito larvae (or daphnia).
BTW blood worm larvae look much like mosquito larvae and in this area you are likely to have both. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chironomidae The flies from blood worm larvae look like mosquito larvae but do not fly away when you see them on a structure, so you can easily kill them compared to mosquitoes.
i live 1 mile from Potomac river and Chapman's Landing park has allot of standing pools of water so there is allot of insect activity in the area. Allot of people in my area use multiple bug zappers. LOL Your info is priceless I really appreciate the info. Hope to see you Saturday. I have 15 Manuba cichlids in my 220Gal tank. They are 3.5"-5" from nose to base of tail. They really love those insects. I gave them 2 teaspoons approximately. it seemed like most were gone in 5 minutes that not over feeding is it?
There is not much possibility of overfeeding live foods. Since live food is hydrated (not dried out), in the fishes gut it cannot swell and hurt the stomach or intestines. Dried food on the other hand is dry, and when a fish eats too much and then the dried food hydrates by sucking up water and the fish's stomach or intestines must stretch to accommodate the enlarged volume. If it cannot, the stomach can rupture to cause a problem and even cause death.
I feed a lot of daphnia sometimes and it appears to me the fish just stop eating daphnia. But the daphnia disappear in a day or less. It can be a great way to condition a pair of fish you want to spawn.
I feed a lot of daphnia sometimes and it appears to me the fish just stop eating daphnia. But the daphnia disappear in a day or less. It can be a great way to condition a pair of fish you want to spawn.
