ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – Did you know fish can help combat mosquitoes?
The City of Albuquerque knows that and for decades has provided free fish, called mosquitofish, to residents to help combat those pesky pests. Wondering how it all works? Well, fish and mosquitoes both have something very important in common: they need water to survive.
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“Water is absolutely necessary for mosquitoes to complete their life cycle. So typically in Albuquerque at the fastest is maybe five days of standing water where you have a mosquito egg, it goes through the stages, the different larval stages, and then emerges as an adult mosquito,” explained City of Albuquerque Urban Biology Division Manager Nick Pederson, adding that mosquitoes need standing water to reproduce.
That is where mosquitofish come in handy to fight off mosquitoes.
“It’s a form of biological control where we can actually place fish [mosquitofish] or people can place fish in say backyard ponds, stagnant swimming pools, fountains, horse troughs, things like that where they’ll actually eat those mosquito larvae and kind of perform the control for us,” Pederson said…