A friend of mine has been having several waves of mosquitoes hatching out IN her house!
She has aquariums with aquatic turtles in her home, so the mosquitoes HAVE to be coming from there.
In researching about them, we discovered mosquitoes have a life cycle of 8-10 days FROM EGG TO FLYING ADULT!!! So it takes no time at all for the winged intruders to reproduce!
Since we just went though Hurricane Ida, even people with house generators and no trees on their homes still have to contend with MOUNTAINS of debris in the yards: fallen branches, deep layers of leaves, etc. That takes a good while to clean up. In all fairness to my friend, we've all been working like mad for weeks to get everything cleaned up. So she neglected her aquarium care for rather longer than she might have. Regardless, our best guess is that a pregnant female mosquito came in with her one day on one of her many trips in and out of the back door of her home during the clean-up phase. The aquarium water, which is slow moving anyway (which mosquitoes LOVE) had not been changed, so the mosquito laid her eggs in the tanks and they hatched out. The larvae NEED oxygen, so they hang/float vertically in the water, often up against an object for stability.
Today we found the source: in ONE of the tanks, what looks like rows of bubbles lining the tank wall is ROWS AND ROWS OF MOSQUITO LARVAE!!!! So, they get dabbed up with paper towels throughout the day, and the flying adults get squished.
My friend's name is LetsPretendItsNotMe ?♀️
She has aquariums with aquatic turtles in her home, so the mosquitoes HAVE to be coming from there.
In researching about them, we discovered mosquitoes have a life cycle of 8-10 days FROM EGG TO FLYING ADULT!!! So it takes no time at all for the winged intruders to reproduce!
Since we just went though Hurricane Ida, even people with house generators and no trees on their homes still have to contend with MOUNTAINS of debris in the yards: fallen branches, deep layers of leaves, etc. That takes a good while to clean up. In all fairness to my friend, we've all been working like mad for weeks to get everything cleaned up. So she neglected her aquarium care for rather longer than she might have. Regardless, our best guess is that a pregnant female mosquito came in with her one day on one of her many trips in and out of the back door of her home during the clean-up phase. The aquarium water, which is slow moving anyway (which mosquitoes LOVE) had not been changed, so the mosquito laid her eggs in the tanks and they hatched out. The larvae NEED oxygen, so they hang/float vertically in the water, often up against an object for stability.
Today we found the source: in ONE of the tanks, what looks like rows of bubbles lining the tank wall is ROWS AND ROWS OF MOSQUITO LARVAE!!!! So, they get dabbed up with paper towels throughout the day, and the flying adults get squished.
My friend's name is LetsPretendItsNotMe ?♀️