Do you want some mosquito fishes (Houston, TX)?

[reptilegrrl]

I have a LOT of extra mosquito fishes... please come get them if you want them.  I am inside the Loop in Houston.  PLEASE come get them!

Mine have bred like crazy and while I am keeping my large ruffly adults, I am more than happy to send some juveniles along to other ponders.

[Jerry]

I am making the same offer but in So California!
I swear they breed 24 hours a day!

[frloplady]

illegal in Washington 

[PondmaninAL]

I'll be glad to help anyone in Central Florida who needs them.

Jerry, just think "guppie". Mosquito fish are live bearers, just like guppies. They are hard to see in a pond with a black liner. My troughs are lined with a black liner and when I feed the rosey reds, all you see of the mosquito fish in that trough is the food sticking out of their mouth.

Happy ponding,
Scott

[reptilegrrl]

Pondman- try moving some of your mosquito fish to a white bucket.  They will turn white, almost clear.  They have the same sort of genes that anoles have, that help them change color.

Mine are mostly invisible in my black-bottomed pond, too, but I can see them from an angle or when the light hits them. 

My mfish are much more friendly than are the goldfish.

[Rocmon]

Yep I've a pond full here in central Calif. Please take them... In the spring I had the mosquito control folks fish a bucket full out of the pond, yet here we are full up again....

Any ideas how to rid a pond of them? Without effecting the other fish...

[reptilegrrl]

Rocmon- I have heard that you can trap them with a soda bottle, and also that if they have less to eat they don't reproduce as much.  But there's no way to kill them that won't kill other fish too.

I love mine, I just don't want to have quite so many of them  

[Rocmon]

Do they swim into the soda bottle for the warmer water? Or do they have to be lured in somehow?

My dislike of the mosquito fish is just that my rosy reds are unable to increase their numbers even though I know they are laying eggs. It wasn't till that point—egg laying, that the mosquitos fish started swimming deep. When the male rosy red would chase off another rosy red I watched the mosquito fish head for the cave... 

I got some Shebunkins and Sarasa's hoping to keep the mosquito fish numbers down, It may have helped but they are still increasing their numbers dramatically, given the other fish aren't having any success, that much I can tell. The frogs were successful only in the upper plant filter pond where few fish show up.

[reptilegrrl]

I've never done it, Rocmon, but I have read that you can cut the open-end off of a soda bottle, and then stick it back into the bottle, and put some food in the bottle... then put the bottle in the pond, fill with pond water, and let it float.  Supposedly the fish will swim in after the food and have a hard time finding their way out. 

YOur minnows would probably swim in too, but you could always put them back in the pond.