Mosquito Fish

[guppymonkey]

I just got some of these guys in the mail from Louisiana! I usually don't buy fish online during the winter because of the hazards of shipping but these little guys are tough. They arrived a couple days late because the shipper had accidentally messed up the address. I openned the box fearing the worst but all the fish survived! I think a large part of that had to do with the way they were shipped. He used those new breather bags that allow oxygen and carbon dioxide to be exchanged through the bag material.

Anyways, these guys are amazing looking! They are so tiny! I have never seen adults that are this small before! Some of the males are less than 1/2 inch!

 

[neon_platy]

that's sooo cool...i can't wait for the goodeids...i plan on doing stuff with more odd fish so ill probably look for mosquito fish sometime too do you have a cam to post pics??

 

[guppymonkey]

i have some pictures but i can't figure out how to post them on here. It says you have to enter a URL which I am assuming means that I can only post them off of a website? I am not a computer person, I have no idea what it really means. So until I figure that out I guess I can't post any pictures. Its hard to take pictures of them because they are so small. They have a tendency to blur when I try to take their picture.

A couple of the females seem to be pregnant so hopefully I will have some young ones before too long! I should join the breeder program that they American Livebearer Association has, I don't think that H. formosa are part of it because they are a fairly common livebearer but its good practice for some of the harder ones! Maybe I can ship you some if they do breed!

 

[neon_platy]

yeah that would be cool...btw i had probs taking pics of my fish and getting them on here....basically this is what you do..you have your digital pic save on your pc. you go to a website like www.photobucket.com, make a free account, shouldn't take too long then you can upload pictures to that website. so once you are writing a post, you would open up photobucket.com there would be all your pics with codes below it and you can copy the url for the pic from there then when you are typing your post click on the pic icon paste the url in there and then it will post your pic there

 

[STEVIE]

These fish may be small but i've found them to be aggressive fin nippers best kept alone.

 

[Annastasia]

These fish may be small but i've found them to be aggressive fin nippers best kept alone.

Ah, the joys of common names. I believe the ones you are referring to are Gambusia Affinis, also called the Mosquito Fish or Western Mosquito Fish. They are aggressive fish. Heterandria Formosa, or the Mosquito Fish are peaceful fish. They often get confused with each other, simply because they are both called the Mosquito Fish. They look different though, so it's not hard to tell them apart once you know what you're looking for.

Heterandria Formosa

Gambusia Affinis

You always have to look at the "scientific" name with these fish, as they can both be called the same thing, but as we've seen, they have different temperments.



Congrats on your new purchase, guppymonkey. Enjoy your new little guys.

 

[bleechme]

Oh now I finally know what the fish I saw at Petsmart is. It's a Gambusia Affinis female. I noticed she didn't look like a female guppy. she must have been mistakenly shipped with the guppies since they don't sell mosquitoe fish there. I almost bought her because I though she was an ackward looking fish.

 

[guppymonkey]

If it looked like a dull female it was probably Gambusia holbrooki not affinis its a common mistake but is very very easy to fix. A lot of websites have the names combined as Gambusia affinis holbrooki but as far as I know they were reclassified as separate species that are just really closely related.

And yes they are amazingly aggressive for their size. I put my Gambusia holbrooki fry in with some convict fry of the same size and they have grown up together for a few months. The Gambusia are just as aggressive as the convicts. Small male mosquitofish nip bits off the tails of the larger convicts! Its actually quite amusing, the convicts are finally getting a little back!

 

[frazoo]

dude those mosquito fish are the toughest fish alive!(literaly) my friend had one in his little 3 gallon trash bad that he throws his fish trash in and it had survived for like 4 months until he realized that it was in there and so he let him go in the pond where we got him. the only thing i dont like about them is that they are agresive,very agresive they almost killed my wonder killi pair.