My flatmate bought a big 8 foot diameter blow up pool thing, and while she's away for christmas I've taken over. I've dumped in tonnes of driftwood to make sure it stays waterlogged and I'm getting a good net-full of larvae every day. It's awesome.

I think you're looking for this thread :lol:

there are some FAT larvae in some of the troughs at Cornwall Park

if anyone in the area wanted to know where the mozzies come from - it's there :sick:

My flatmate bought a big 8 foot diameter blow up pool thing, and while she's away for christmas I've taken over. I've dumped in tonnes of driftwood to make sure it stays waterlogged and I'm getting a good net-full of larvae every day. It's awesome.

Awesome, thats about all those pools are good for anyway

Saves you building a fence around it.

First Harvest of mozzie larvae just now!

Fish are loving it. :lol:

My daphnia have been going strong in a bucket outside all winter too. I also get little things that look like baby brine shrimp, bloodworms and long black worms too. Yum yum for the fish.

The little things you talk off, Are they little dark colored dots that hang around in the corners of the containers?? I have these aswell as daphnia and cyclops. Cyclops are little white things with tails that dart around and get dots on there tails ( baby cyclops ). The little dark dots are great food for my bettas when they are too young for daphnia.

Don't think they were dark. My daphnia culture has died off over summer, maybe temps getting too high. Ton of blackworms in the substrate of the pond though

The little dots are copepods or something. Also edible for fish.

Daphnia change colour depending on what they are eating. I used to have 2 containers. One with green algae in it and the daphnia were bright green. The other container did not have anything green in it and the daphnia were brown.

what do you think of my rafts?

This is my water bucket that I started a week or so ago and then on the weekend dumped some pea and spinach juice in from the blender.

Wow, some mozzie has been busy!

I sometimes take a few rafts and sit them in my fry tanks - instant fast food when they hatch, and you do not have to sort them out for size and end up with adults in the house because they are too big to fit in the fish's mouth.

after I discovered that they hatch within 48 hours I whipped em downstairs to the bugs tank and put them in there.

Next I will get a heater and put some of my killie fry in there to get chomping!

checked the rafts in the tank and many of them have broken up into little pieces, there look like hundreds or even a thousand wrigglers in the tank :bounce:

Found another collection of new rafts and have put those in there too.

Got a heater in it so tomorrow or Friday someone is going to have a feast.

I am pleased to report that my mozzie/bug buckets are doing very well.

One bucket I was trying to overfish the critters out so I could close it down but today I noticed thousands of what must be ostracods swarming. These are the size of a pin prick, different to the few in there that are the size of a pinhead, maybe they are babies.

The other bucket was very green, I put a new motherload of daphnia and ostracods in from the farm and over a week they cleaned up much of the greenery and there is just some floating stuff at the bottom. Yesterday I was pleased to find about 6 live bloodworm in there. 3 of those went to the killies today and they just about went to nuclear war over them.

I think I have Multi Bucket Syndrome, thinking of starting a bigger bucket. My husband has even offered to build me a plastic lined trough for them :lol:

You know you are addicted to fish when you offer up in an open forum that you have MBS for live food.

or maybe I am addicted to the gladiator style entertainment that happens when feeding live critters to other critters

though not addicted to the excitement that it causes - killies are now extremely excitable at mealtimes and I've had 2 jump right out of the tank in the last 2 weeks :-?

Here is the culmination of Multi Bucket Syndrome - The Taj Mahal of buckets - Bugtopia!

1 x $20 80L heavy duty container from Bunnings + about $15 worth of wood and screws. Container sits on the ground and box fits over the top of the plastic to cover the edges.

Have moved all my bugs and water from the 2 buckets and since the first bucket went in the mosquitoes have christened with 2 rafts.

Whose eggs are these? Looks like a miniature slinky inside jelly, when I enlarged the photo I could see it was tiny eggs in a spiral.

Nice looking enclosure for your 'bucket' there Sophia!

Great last pic - good detail, but I have no idea what it could be.

hey guys, just wondering how your bugtopias are getting on.

Mine is still going, though a few less bugs over winter. I can do a harvest of mozzies once a weekend and get a decent amount to feed out. Daphnia are still going, have been making babies over winter so I am hoping for a population explosion when the weather warms up again.

Yesterday I discovered a new bug - an aquatic earthworm. I thought a bird had dropped it in but it appeared to be living under the water rather than flailing around. Seems that they could be these http://www.waitakere.govt.nz/abtcit/ei/ecowtr/macroinv/eiseniella.asp

I found 3 total. According to above I should only be worried when those are the only bugs in there :sage:

The blanket weed I was cultivating was removed at the beginning of winter and it hasn't grown back either.

The blanket weed I was cultivating was removed at the beginning of winter and it hasn't grown back either.

Less sunlight so it will die off.

My containers are crawling with Bloodworms and Mysis shrimp that I put in there ages ago. Its good as I feed them out, trouble is I dont have many fish to feed them to now. Scarlett Badis love them though. Mossies die right off down here during the inter. It gets too cold here in the real NZ

I moved house in July, brought the Bugtopia box and the water with me. Set it up next to the house where I thought it would get at least the same amount of sunshine as the last house. It seems that it gets more but that's meant that the daphnia and mosquito larvae have started multiplying faster and I'm harvesting a good crop once a week, more if I wanted. There is also more blanket weed but I'm taking it out every week or 2 when I remember. It's not taking over.

What I have noticed is that there are 2 new kinds of ostracod that weren't here before. I had them in an original stock dump from the sheep trough but they never survived. Now they've arrived all by themselves. Maybe it's the extra sunlight? I assume the blanket weed is a source of food in some way also.

I have a wee tank full of driftwood, I thought it was too cold for mozzy larvae Maybe I'll go move it into a sunnier spot!

yes go on, see if you get more bugs

yes go on, see if you get more bugs

See if I get ANY bugs :lol: