Hello Frogs, Fish, Bats, & “Golondrinas” – Jack Ewing
Bye-Bye Mosquitos
Many years ago, before we had electricity, I had a small fish tank. I couldn’t use an air pump to oxygenate the water, so I had to struggle to keep everything in balance as best I could. Fish need oxygen, which is produced by green plants, which need nutrients, which are provided by fish feces, which comes from fish that eat everything from green plants and fish food to mosquito larvae. If you feed the fish too much, the excess food will lie on the bottom of the aquarium and decompose, a process which depletes the oxygen. You need just the right amount of each thing, fish, plants, and fish food. Snails are important too. They clean the algae off the glass. My fish were common guppies. A couple of tiny tree frogs also found the tank to their liking and added their presence to the mix. Plants, water, and mosquitos. What else could a frog want. This added a new twist to the balancing of the tank. Guppies like frog eggs and tadpoles, and tadpoles eat mosquito eggs, larva, and pupae. Is it any wonder that I failed to create a perfectly balanced aquarium and had to empty it out and start over a couple of times? It was quite a challenge which I never got exactly right, but I learned a lot about nature and especially about the dynamics of aquatic ecosystems.
That fish tank was the beginning of my understanding of mosquitos. After 53 years of living in the tropics, where mosquitos thrive, I’ve learned a lot. When Hacienda Barú was engaged in rice farming we had hordes of mosquitos. I remember one night when I had to wear a jacket, leather shoes and gloves, lather my face with repellent, and sleep under a mosquito net to keep from being ravaged. When we quit farming rice, and spraying insecticides all over the fields, the mosquitos diminished. In addition to the insects that damage rice, the insecticides kill a lot of other things, some of which prey on mosquitos, including dragonflies, spiders, frogs, geckos, and fish.