Live Food

[mattbond]

can you grow and culture daphnia for livefood at home, and if so, how would you go about it?

id really appreciate it and im sure my kribs would too!

 

[Truck]

2 litre bottle
air pump with airstone
and eggs in a window

 

[mattbond]

food? would a packet of live daphnia breed if you put them in?

 

[OldMan47]

I have a daphnia culture going as an extra treat for my fish. It is running in a 10 gallon tank and I am feeding them a mix of dry powders. They get a blend of what I had on hand or could get fairly cheap when the culture got set up. It is a mix of soybean meal, brewer's yeast from a health food store, some spirulina flake that I crushed fine and some small amount of paprika. By feeding this twice a day, I am getting enough daphnia to use a brine shrimp net to get some out every day. It is not enough to feed any other tank completely but does give several of my fish tanks a weekly treat. I remove 30% of the water each week and strain out the daphnia in that water to also feed to the fish. When I do a water change on the culture, I use water from one of my tanks to make sure there is no chlorine in the new water. Daphnia are reputed to be very sensitive to chlorine so I just don't take the chance with them.
Edit: To Matt's question, I got my culture from another person and almost lost it trying to do the green water thing with a jar on a window sill. When I gave up on that and started artificial feeding them, the culture recovered from about 20 individuals to a culture that has several hundred individual adult daphnia. I run it with just an air stone so I must do water changes to keep the ammonia down. Even daphnia are a small bioload.

 

[mattbond]

thanks very much!

if i got collected rain water and put that in a bucket, then put in an airstone and a packet of live dapnia from the fish shop, would that work?

could you give them fish flake as food?

 

[OldMan47]

I have never tried rain water on mine. My fish live in rather hard water from my tap and the daphnia get waste water from fish tank water changes. The daphnia need very fine particles of food but if you could make the fish flake into a dust it might work. I am fairly new to this myself and have happened on a method that is working for me so far. I have never seen daphnia in a fish shop but I got a starter colony from a fellow fish club member. I don't see anything wrong with the bucket but when you have a spare 10 gallon tank, it works out nicely to just use it like I did.

 

[Elrohirthehasty]

thanks very much!

if i got collected rain water and put that in a bucket, then put in an airstone and a packet of live dapnia from the fish shop, would that work?

could you give them fish flake as food?

from what ive heard, daphnia can live in most water with a wide range of temp, hardness, pH and the like

 

[OldMan47]

Not so hasty Elrohir. Daphnia are widely adapted to different water conditions but the used tank water is to keep the poisons down. Daphnia have been described in some places as the canary in the mine of aquarium keepers. When the daphnia can't survive, it is an indication the water may be deteriorating. I figure any fish keeper has a fairly steady supply of used tank water so that is what I would use.