Firing up the live food

[GaryE]

We are having a strange, late bloomer of a summer, with endless fog banks, cold temperatures (for the season) and no sun. So I decided to buy Daphnia and moina eggs this year, rather than to try to harvest Daphnia pulex locally. I couldn't predict when the wild Daphnia would pop up.

I set up 2 screened 60 l tubs and today, I figured they were green enough. I added the eggs.

There's no reason why this shouldn't work. It has before. I can usually harvest in a few weeks (though in a normal year I would have started in May). I'll have good live food til mid October. The Daphnia will lay eggs, which will survive freezing over the winter, and should hatch come the Spring.

This time I have a 30 gallon tank on the garage floor, in sunlight, and that's where I put the moina. D pulex has never been able to overwinter here, but maybe moina will. I have jars of greenwater for daily feeding.

I hatch brine shrimp, but the price is crazy for them. I also culture whiteworms. Live foods are great for fish breeders. If you aren't trying to condition fish for egg laying, it's a lot of set up for minimal results. A lot of people with gardening minds enjoy playing with weird food cultures, and they do produce results with my killies, tetras, Corys and dwarf Cichlids.

 

[CaptainBarnicles]

Please keep us updated I'm watching this thread as I'd love a daphnia culture...can't find eggs in the uk

 

[Colin_T]

You can find Daphnia in freshwater ponds that dry out over summer and refill in winter. Then you use a fine mesh fish net to scoop some up and put them in a bucket of pond water, take them home and add them to a container of green water. Wait a month and you have too many to feed.

If you do collect wild Daphnia, add them to a culture and let them breed for a bit. Collect the babies and move the babies to a new container of green water and let them grow and breed. Then use those for food.

Wild Daphnia can carry worms and other parasites that can affect fish. By breeding them in one container and moving the new babies into a clean container of green water, you get a clean culture that should be free of diseases.

 

[GaryE]

@Colin_T You're in Australia...

In Canada, I catch Daphnia in snow melt ponds . They can be found where forests flood (some of these ponds can be quite large). We get fairy shrimp, which die off as water temperatures reach about 18c. Then the daphnia appear just ahead of the mosquito larvae. When the water gets up to 24, as it evaporates, you find no more daphnia. If the sun gets to the pond, the season is very short.

Ponds can be hard to find as all the good ones I knew in my old area were getting buried in urban sprawl. There is an area of McMansions that I know are doomed have some damp basements and hordes of mosquiteos around their backyard pools...

There's a nearby gravel pit with a vernal pond on the edge of pines. I wanted to check it out, but our weather has been insane. Next year if we get a normal progression of winter to Spring to summer, I'll head down with a net.

One of the joys of vernal ponds is that they don't support fish life. That reduces the chances of parasites. I've collected daphnia to seed backyard cultures for many years, and have had zero problems from them, beyond the odd hydra sneaking in with them.

 

[Back in the fold]

I have searched for wild daphnia my whole life to no avail . Really ! Every time I encounter any wild pond or similar I take pains to look but have never seen them. Guess I’ll never see Bigfoot , D.B. Cooper , Elvis , Nessie or a bony-fide UFO either .