Help! How can I get rid of Mosquito larvae in a pond my dogs drink out of?
Saturday, July 17th, 2010 at
12:00 am
I have a 20 gallon pond/fountain, and my dogs drink out of it regularly. My concern is that I don't want standing water (due to mosquitoes), but we can't have the fountain run all the time. Is it safe to put a couple of tablespoons of bleach in it every other day or so?
Tagged with: bleach • dogs • gallon pond • mosquitoes • pond fountain
Filed under: water gardens
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I’m trying to dig back in my memory for matters relating to your dilemma. If you add a bit of baby oil to the water so that a film of oil covers the water, mosquito larvae need to get to the air to breathe, the oil blocks the contact with the air,
you could also use a pesticide on the water .Neither remedy would be good for the dogs, so we’ll scrap that idea. I also don’t think bleach would be a good idea.
You might try raising the pond/fountain above the capabilities of the dogs.
You could screen the pond area of the fountain but that would lose the effect of the display.
Drain the unit when not in use, big problem there, a pain to keep emptying and filling.
Give the dogs away and get cats, you probably wouldn’t do that ether.
One last solution, Take a video of the fountain running throw the fountain away. Show the video when when sitting and relaxing with the dogs. Everyone happy.
Use pool chlorine instead. Have you talked to your Vet? Ask how much it takes to make it potable.Bye
A better solution than bleach are mosquito "dunks". These are biological larvacide pellets that only kill mosquito larvae and are not harmful to people or pets. Just place one every week or two into the pond and it will slow release to keep out the mosquitos. Most garden stores have them.
Another natural solution would be to put a couple of fish in the pond. The pet store has "feeder" fish. They are inexpensive, maybe 50 cents? get a few and when they get hungry they will eat the larvae. Beta fish will DEFINATELY eat the larvae, but they cost more and you can only put one male fish in the pond. Wouldn’t hurt to try.
If you turn the fountain on for a few mins daily, it will stir the water enough to keep mosquito larvae/pupa from hatching. Five mins in the morning and/or five in the evening should be sufficient or at the very least run it every other day for a few mins.
Hope this helps.
well to tell u the truth, don’t put bleach in to your precious thing especially if you have a living animal that drinks out of it your dogs will get bleach into their stomachs and that will just be nasty, instead for 5 min run the water a little and it should help, come on, no one cares if you waste 5 mins of water if it’s for a good reason!!!!
We use these: Mosquito Donuts. You can break them into pieces according to the size of your pond. We use them all the time and they are safe. We have 3 dogs who are drinking out of our 2 ponds all the time. We have used these for over 4 years now.
Here’s a site to tell you about them. You can get these any place that would sell outdoor products and even some Farm and Fleet Stores carry them, but we get ours at a place called Menards.
get a solar powered water pump to run the fountain when the sun is out and no electricity wasted!… the dogs will still drink and mosquito’s wont breed in the running water…. everyone happy…. http://www.stealthwholesale.com search for solar water pumps.