We know that quality feeding during the young phase has a direct impact on the fitness of adult mosquitoes. In insectary, several are the feeding possibilities for the larvae, among them we can highlight, fish feed, cat food, brewer's yeast, among others. Would you like to know what food is used in your laboratory for breeding mosquitoes? How is food supplied to the larvae (whole, macerated ...)? And what kind of Culicidae do you colonize?
Tetramin baby fish food dispersed on the water surface for Anopheles species.
I know some lab use dry food for cats (crushed or not)
Olivier, Thanks for your input. I believe that many laboratories use "Tetra" brand rations. Here we use TetraMinTablets and TetraMinFlakes (to Aedes aegypti and Anopheles aquasalis), but we are testing other possibilities.
Yes, the tetramin baby fish food is a good choice for the Anopheles's larvae. While the feeding does should be considered carefully. Wish you sucess.
I Know somebody use yeast powder and dog biscuit in the ratio of 2:1. All the best
Mosquito immaturescan practically survive on any diet..it may be Baby food or Dod biscuit or even algae. However, I find the mixture of Dog biscuit and yeast in 3:1 ratio very successful in my insectory for Anophelines and in 2: 1 ratio for Culicines. The food should be given in small quantities 2 to 3 times in a day and not in a bulk. Also important is daily water change of the rearing tray.
We used Tetramin " Fish food" or mixture of Powdered biscuit (or dry bread) + powderd milk+ yeast in a ratio of 2:1:1
We have used fed bovine liver powder, is a good choice for Ae. aegypti, Ae. albopictus, in small quantities 2 to 3 times in a day.
Thank you all for your contributions. Very interesting to see the diversity of possibilities.
In Venezuela, we feed mosquito larvae with bovine liver powder (for Aedes aegypti), and fish food for Anopheles. However, in mosquito from phytotelmata, we used the water collected as food resource...
For all mosquito larvae, just after they emerge (on the first day or two), you can use liquid fish food Liquifry.
Then, for Anophelines, you can use Tetramin baby fish food (flakes but ground into fine powder) dispersed on the water surface. Dr Clarke's Pool Pellets (floating pellets of fish food) work really well too.
For Culicines (Culex and Aedes spp) you could try using guine pig pellets.
If rearing larvae collected in the wild, keep them in water where they were originally found. That should be rich in nutrients (always collect extra, so you can top up the bowls).
For "Culex pipiens" larvae we used fish food+ water from biotop of C. pipiens. We took high mortality with cat's croquettes
Dear Friends do you have any research papers relate food to feed mosquito larvae in the laboratory?
Tetramin "fish food'' or dry bread (1)+ yeast (0.5) + dry milk (0.5)
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