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

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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