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Now I've been keeping goldfish for 30 years and I don't think there's any doubt my favourite bit of the hobby is feeding these little water pigs
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Today I want to answer the question, can goldfish eat mosquito larvae? Hello friends, welcome back to the channel. If you're new here, my name is Richard and I'm the owner of the fishkeepinganswers.com website
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A great place for us goldfish keepers, tropical fish keepers, puffer fish keepers, we can geek out
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So today, as I say, I'm answering the question, can goldfish eat mosquito larvae
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And the answer is a resounding yes. Mosquito larvae are typically very nutritious for the fish and the fish relish them
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We can feed them live. We can feed them frozen. We can also feed them freeze dried, making it super convenient for us
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Now, as the name very much suggests, mosquito larvae are the larval stage of the mosquito fly
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Typically, the way mosquitoes reproduce is the females will land on a small body of water, typically still water
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They will place their eggs under the surface of the water. The eggs will hatch and the larvae then
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spend some time underwater before emerging to become mosquitoes. For us hobbyists, mosquito
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larvae are often available in red black or white And in my experience it doesn matter which one you go for The fish will typically eat them The nutritional value is more or less the same just go with whatever you can get now to us hobbyists mosquito larvae are usually available in three different forms which is live frozen or freeze
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dried and in my experience as much of a muchness i would just feed my goldfish whichever one i had
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best access to so the main advantage of feeding your goldfish live mosquito larvae is it's a
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a fantastic way to stimulate any fish that are reluctant to eat. As the mosquito larvae
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wriggle through the water, they typically draw out a feeding response, even from the most reluctant
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goldfish. For many of us, we can make our own live mosquito larvae simply by placing a container of
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old tank water outside the house, leave it for a few days, and more often than not, you'll find that
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A mosquito has landed, laid her eggs, and those eggs will now be in the larval stage
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All we need to do is scoop them out with a net, bring them in, place them in our tank
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and the fish will go crackers for them. The only downside with creating your own live mosquito larvae is you do have to harvest them regularly
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Otherwise, all you've created is a mosquito farm, and neither your family nor your neighbours are going to thank you for that For me the most convenient way to feed mosquito larvae is in frozen form These ones are the black ones but I just keep several packs in the freezer and whenever I want to feed the fish pop a cube or two in and they will typically peck at it as it as it melts
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and dissolves in the water. At the moment these guys have got a cube of frozen brine shrimp in the
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tank. I typically feed my goldfish mosquito larvae, brine shrimp, bloodworms, cyclops, mysis shrimp
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I keep a whole variety in the freezer. The main advantage of frozen mosquito larvae is they're
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relatively easy to store. If you've got a freezer you can keep a pack in there. They're widely
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available in most stores and it does mean you can just go grab a cube drop it in the tank
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Makes a great addition to your normal feeding regime. There is a downside to feeding frozen
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and that is if like me you ever end up leaving the packet on top of your tank for too long
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they will melt they will ruin and they will stink out your fish room so pop out a couple of cubes
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drop them in your tank and put the pack back in the freezer now the final way that mosquito larvae
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are often sold in stores is in freeze-dried form and freeze-dried form is fabulous because it stores
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pretty much forever keep the lid on the container close and those freeze-dried mosquito larvae
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will be fine for months and I suspect they be fine for years and again as part of a balanced diet you drop a few freeze drive mosquito larvae into the tank They quickly absorb some of the tank water and the fish will come along and they relish them
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Now, the next question I typically get after people ask if they can feed their goldfish mosquito larvae is how often should they feed them
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And now I feed my fish three or four times a day and I like to feed a different food at each feeding
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and I will typically give them frozen or live mosquito larvae two or three times a week on
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average. I like to every day give my fish some sort of live or frozen food whether that's daphnia
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whether that's bloodworm or mosquito larvae but typically two or three times a week. Now if like
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me you really like to geek out on a subject I'll put a link in the description to the main goldfish
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page on the fishkeepinganswers.com website. We've got dozens of articles there on keeping goldfish
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breeding goldfish, feeding goldfish or plants you can keep with goldfish it's a fantastic
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place to spend an hour or two diving into the hobby. Thanks for watching
