Mosquito larvae: an alternative to brine shrimp
By Terry Ranson
From Vol. 1, No. 10 The Newsletter of The Tri-State Aquarium Society September 1999
Aquarticles
Feeding baby brine shrimp is the best way I know of to raise cichlid fry, but brine shrimp
cysts are getting more and more expensive. However, mosquito larvae are free.
I am constantly curing driftwood in 55-gallon drums outdoors, and, for some reason, the
tannin-browned water in those drums produce vast numbers of mosquito larvae.
Recently, several pairs of cichlids have spawned in my tanks, namely Sciaenochromis
fryeri, Neolamprologus caudo-punctatus and Neolamprologus leleupi. I was
running out of brine shrimp cysts. Having recently lost my job, I was also running low on
money. It occurred to me that many of the mosquito larvae I was feeding to adult cichlids
were small enough for fry to eat.
I used a brine shrimp net to harvest mosquito larvae from the 55-gallon drums. I then
rinsed the larvae out in a small bowl of clean water, and used a regular fish net to net
out the larger mosquito larvae. The remainder went through the larger netting, and I was
left with tiny, newly-hatched mosquito larvae, which the cichlid fry ate with gusto. This
is providing me with a free alternative to newly-hatched brine shrimp.
As a side note, I purchased some 1/4 inch long Dolphin Cichlids, Crytocara moorii,
at a tropical fish auction held by the Greater Cincinnati Aquarium Society, and
immediately began feeding them mosquito larvae. These fish are now an inch long, and have
exhibited a brilliant blue coloration I 've never seen before in C. moorii at
that size, even though I have bred and raised them myself. I don't know whether they are
are simply a superior line of fish, or if their color is due to the mosquito larvae. I
suspect the latter.
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