After noticing that I never found any mosquito egg rafts appearing in my tub of Ultricularia gibba bladderwort, I have been using this bladderwort for the past 8 years to keep mosquitoes from breeding in my other small tubs of aquatic plants. This summer my brother tried it in his tubs of aquatics and in the water-filled saucers placed under his pots of carnivorous plants. Previously he had been trying to keep mosquitoes from breeding in these containers by stocking them with a few minnows (gambusia, rosy reds, baby goldfish, etc.), but had a problem with small frogs moving into these containers and eating the fish. He reported complete success, with no mosquito wrigglers appearing in any of his containers stocked with bladderwort.
Apparently female mosquitoes can detect the presence of U. gibba in the
water and refuse to lay their eggs in any water containing it. Bladderwort is a carnivorous plant and eats mosquito larvae and other small aquatic organisms. It catches them using a suction trap triggered by the prey organism. U. gibba is a small submerged aquatic bladderwort with small yellow flowers in the spring. Superficially it looks like a filamentous green algae until you notice the scores of bladder traps associated with it and any small piece can grow into a new plant. This species is
native throughout the world from the tropics as far north as Canada and, as long as its in water, can tolerate most climates.
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