Collected flying insects for fish?

[King puff]

I am positive that everyone here has had a fly in their house at least once. Are wild insects safe for fish to eat? I feed my fish small flies that they can swallow which they seem to love. Is this ok? I feel like it brings out the instinct in them. I feel like it is fine unless the insect stings, lives in water, or bites. What are your thoughts?

 

[NickAu]

I do it all the time, However where I live ( Lots of alternative life style types ) pesticides are a strict no no everything is organic.

I also breed fruit fly maggots and mosquito larvae in summer. As I also have a small worm farm all my fish get fresh small earth worms.

Now Imagine this, a 54 year old man in a park with a pink net catching butterflies, Even the police stopped once to question me about what I was doing, Now nobody pays attention to the crazy old fish guy catching bugs in the park anymore.

This cost me $3 and has paid for itself many times over,

 

[King puff]

Yes, I do have a net. In the summer and winter, we are always are infested with mosquitoes. It never gets below 30 degrees here so I always have a good amount of insects to feed my fish. Breeding mosquito larvae is a good idea. How do you do this. Do you wait for them to emerge as mosquitoes or feed them to your fish as larvae?

 

[NickAu]

I have a bucket full of water behind the shed it only gets topped up when it rains, when I want mosquito larvae I just net some and dump them in the tank, I just use a small aquarium net with some pantyhose as the net.

https://www.wikihow.com/Raise-Mosquito-Larvae-for-Fish-Food

Kinda like this

 

[King puff]

Oh! So the water will not contaminate the tank with harmful bacteria? The water where I would get mosquito larvae would be old and smell bad. Could I "rinse" the larvae before I put them in the tank?

 

[NickAu]

Sure,

 

[King puff]

Ok! Thanks for the help. Im going out right after this is sent to go collect some.

 

[AbbeysDad]

The concept of the old guy in the park running around with a net conjures up the image of a couple of other guys in white coats with a much bigger net!!! LOL

I remember in the old days catching and culturing live foods. The trouble is in the nutritional balance. These days with the availability of high quality foods it seems almost counter productive to attempt a blend of live foods...perhaps just use them as treats as you might frozen brine shrimp or bloodworms.

 

[King puff]

Yes, this is not going to be my fishes main diet. I will still feed them prepared foods.

 

[King puff]

What about daphnia? I have a lot of this near me along with other microorganisms.

 

[King puff]

I believe that daphnia fed in large quantities can bother the fishes digestive track. Is this true? Also, if I net other things besides daphnia, it that ok?

 

[NickAu]

Daphnia are great; they help clean out the system and work well for constipation.

 

[King puff]

Are they something that I can feed just for nutrition? Or only if my fish have constipation, and will the other microorganisms that I net be bad for the fish? I also just fed them some flying gnats. The fish jumped fully out of the water to catch them. Very interesting to watch.

 

[NickAu]

Just be careful they dont jump out of the tank. I feed live and frozen as treats
https://www.biotope.com.au/index.php?main_page=page&id=25&chapter=1

 

[Chief Brody]

The only thing you don't want is dragonfly larvae. They're vicious piscavores. I lost a baby gar to one so really watch for them-they're unmistakable. I keep a tub out in the yard in indirect sunlight all summer. Just throw something in there to rot. Leaves work just no walnut. I've heard of ppl using lettuce. Mosquitoes will find it naturally and you should get mosquito larvae and bloodworms. I then added a culture of wild-caught daphnia along with some muck I dredged up from a pond in the country, this was where I got the dragonfly larvae hitchhiker. When the temperatures are ideal this is what I primarily feed my smaller fish - apistos, tetras and loaches mostly. Right now it's frozen over but due to climate change I was pulling out full nets of bloodworms straight thru November. Pretty cool. I don't think we should have to pay for fish food and I refuse to do it. I think corporations should just give it to us for free as they usually do. All the packaged fish food I have I got from conventions/auctions/free giveaways etc. I'm sure there's a way to get sponsored especially with the internet. It's a racket and I won't participate. They can all go...
- anyways my neighbors appreciate the mosquito control as well so

Sent from my SM-G730V using Tapatalk