Thursday, 23 June 2016

Controlling mosquitoes - White Cloud Mountain minnows

I mentioned previously that we were keeping white cloud mountain minnows in our lotus pot to prevent mosquitoes breeding. We started out with a few outside and a few inside, around Christmas time 2015.

The outdoor ones cleared out any mosquito larvae overnight and were quite happy outside in the summer. However, we did have to move the pot into shade on the days where the temperature was in the high 30s to 40s.

Here's the small planted tank that we experimented with indoors. In the background is driftwood with crested java fern, some java moss in the middle and then small Bacopa cuts in the foreground.

These fish actually did very well and all those small dots you can see at the surface are fish spawn. They are prolific breeders which spawned multiple times over summer. However, most of the spawn disappeared - likely eaten by the adult fish.

We ended up putting these indoor fish outside when we started another water pot with a water lily. Of the tank fish, only one baby managed to survive and is now happily living outside in the water lily pot with the rest.

The outdoor fish also spawned, and the spawn were more successful, probably because there's more cover for hiding in a water garden. From those, we now have an extra seven fish - you can see the smaller baby fish in comparison to the adults in the photo above. This will need some thinking about next spring/summer so we don't get overcrowding.

As you can see (although lighting is different between the photos), these fish tend to be a brighter colour when living outside. I only feed them once a week or so, but I think you don't even have to do this if you have many plants growing in the pot (I have Azolla, Elodea and various random growth).

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