Mosquito larvae for wildcaught sunfish, perch, etc

[emartin]

After letting my new wildcaught sunfish, pirate perch, darters, dace, etc, I am going to try and get them to eat frozen glassworms and bloodworms, live brine shrimp, etc as my next step in trying to keep them a live since I have no experience with coldwater fish let a lone native fish let a lone freshly caught fish...

Anyway just to verify before I possibly waste my time, to get Mosquito larvae all I'd have to do is put a shallow bin outside with tap water (has to be dechlorinated or doesn't matter?) and then just wait for them to appear?

I'm mostly curious about the dechlorinated part though. I do remember seeing live bloodworms in my bird bath a few weeks ago but that water was sitting there for at least 2 weeks so the chlorine must've gassed off, and I'm not sure if mosquitos will produce larvae in chlorinated water or if the chlorine should gas off in just a couple of hours outside.

Should I let the water get scummy or will the mosquitos lay in clean (well, not-scummy) water?

Lastly, is there any bait I can put in the bin to attract mosquitos more, or just wait for them to come on their own?

I'm planning on putting the bin outside today so I'd like to set it up properly the first time to get larvae as soon as possible for these guys before they starve...

~Ed

[joe_jaskot]

You are better off just using water from your fish tank after a water change. It is going to take a while for the mosquito larvae to grow (about two weeks). Hard to raise a lot of mosquitoes to feed large fish. Have you tried earthworms. Most native fish will eat them.

[AlishanAS]

I assume you went on the Ray Wetzel collecting trip. I went about 3 years ago on the first trip with Ray, Alan Fletcher, Steve Guyger and others.

I fed the sunfish and other natives live blackworms. They loved it. They eventually ate frozen mysis, bloodworms and glassworms.

Of course, as expected, the baby chain pickerel ended up eating everything in the tank.

[emartin]

I assume you went on the Ray Wetzel collecting trip. I went about 3 years ago on the first trip with Ray, Alan Fletcher, Steve Guyger and others.

I fed the sunfish and other natives live blackworms. They loved it. They eventually ate frozen mysis, bloodworms and glassworms.

Of course, as expected, the baby chain pickerel ended up eating everything in the tank.
Tom if you don't mind me asking, how did you know I HAD a baby chain pickerel (5-6", neat little guy)? :lol: I was going to keep it but I couldn't see myself devoting one 75g to one for life...then I found out later that Warmouth Sunfish would likely get a long with a pickerel the same size in a 75g so I'll have to keep that in mind if I decide to keep one again in the future.

Unfortunately I didn't take Ray's advice LITERALLY about bringing lots of buckets, ice packs, air pumps, etc (all of which I had) so a lot of the Rainbow Dace, Small Dace, a few darters and a couple Black Banded SUnfish and some other kind died within 24 hours (most before I got home). Surprisingly I found a 1/2" Sunfish swimming in the tank yesterday... I thought I through all the baby sunfish back into the lake since they usually don't survive the journey.

Anyway I'll reluctantly drive over to the nearby Tropiquarium and get some live blackworms a long with live brine shrimp today. They seem to be doing better after I overdosed ChloramX a little bit yesterday to help with cycling since I don't have any established bacteria at that temperature let alone pH...

So anyway you guys think it would be better to just use tank water in the shallow bin for the mosquito larvae? And there really isn't any thing I can use as a bait to lure them to it?

I haven't tried earthworms, especially since only one of them is big enough (about 4") to possibly eat a few cut up pieces but I am going to try red worms for the musk turtle...

Thanks though to both of you.

~Ed

[AlishanAS]

I brought along many buckets along with several battery operated air pumps and only lost a few tiny black bandeds.
I kept them in a 23g mirror FBH with several pieces of Malaysian drift wood which gave the water the same "tea" color from released tannins. They all did fine until the pickerel started to GROW.

[emartin]

Right now everybody appears to be eating except for the Rainbow Dace, the Darters, one injured/stressed Black Banded Sunfish, and the Pirate Perch. (In other words, all the sunfish are eating).

Any ideas on getting the Pirate Perch and Darters and Rainbow Dace to eat or just keep trying blackworms, brine shrimp, and frozen glass worms?

~Ed

[Flareside]

slightly off topic, but do you guys have any pics of your native tanks and the fish? I would love to see them

[emartin]

Mine looks nothing more than a holding tank and the only fish in there at the moment worth photographing is the black banded sunfish. I actually contacted Ray, the guy that organized the collecting trip to see if he wants the fish since I decided to reuse that 75g for cichlids and I am just going to keep the crayfish and turtle I got from the trip in a 20g or something.

So sorry I don't have any pics of the tanks. If you want me to get pics of the fish though let me know and I'll try and get a few decent ones later.

~Ed

[Flareside]

if you get a chance, snap a pic or two of the fish. Im interested because a few years back I took my boat out and caught some sunfish, yellow perch, and some crappy's.
It was a beautiful tank, I just decided after a few months to let them all go before winter.

Thought I may do it again some day