Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2003 16:26:55 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Phyllis Grimm Subject: Re: Mosquitos??? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I am responding to Tom's inquiry with some trepidation: I have a small pond in my lawn which we have always kept stocked with ordinary goldfish. We never had any problem with mosquitoes. None of the fish survived this past winter however. By June the pond was teeming with mosquito larvae. Not wanting to contribute to the spread of West Nile Virus or even to have all those mosquitoes swarming around I wanted to get rid of the larvae. The advice I was given by the people at the Extension Service was to either replace the fish (duh) or use "Mosquito Dunks", available at home and garden centers. Being unsuccessful at finding "ordinary" ( i.e. "cheap") goldfish I went with the Dunks. They were quite effective. According to the package the Dunks contain Bacillus thuringiensis subspecies israelensis primary powder which seems like a natural product to me, although I am a little concerned about importing non-native bacilli-assuming that this strain is in fact imported.If anyone has information showing the bacilli to have negative effects on the environment or its inhabitants (except mosquito larvae) let me know. You'll also need to suggest a better solution to the problem. Phyllis G. Grimm Reisterstown, MD ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================