Daphnia culture , second attempt

[wuvmybetta]

Alrighty, I set this up last Saturday when a man from an awesome fish store insisted that I try again and he gave me a culture. He had pond after pond full at his shop, they were all outside and doing awesome. Last time I tried a culture inside, in a ten gallon and they all died off within two weeks. So, we shall see how this one does.

I find them quite fascinating and I wind up staring at them for a few minutes during my hundreds of trips outside to play with my kid every day. The population seems to have at least tripled what it was when I got the culture. I see tons of baby daphnia swimming around. I know the duckweed is growing like mad

Anyway, I used plain old (old) tank water and cleaned out the filters on my tanks and threw the 'gunk' in there as I was told to do. Last night I gave them a spot of sweet potato baby food and it was neat how they all gathered and swam thru it,filter feeding. Very cool B)
Anyway, we'll see how it goes this time.

That container holds between 25-30 gallons. I used it a few years ago to grow strawberries. I finally found another use for it

 

[cation]

Wow, cool! I'll be interested to hear how the experiment progresses....

 

[wuvmybetta]

Thanks for throwing me a bone,Ms.Jen Seriously, it really is interesting though. I told Tuesday that I may just give up fish and focus solely on raising fish food B)

 

[Bettaman]

get rid of the duck weed as you want as much light to enter the water as possible ill take a picture of mine an old corner bath its teaming with them they live off green water best so thats why i say get the duck weed out or keep it down i have underwater oxygenating and i throw some of my dirty water in just to feed the Algae as its possible full of nitrates which is what the algae wants mine has been going since last year, and they slow down but only produce females in the colder weather its now its warming the males come along and they breed like RABBITS.......get a net full every time feeds all,,,,,,,,..........

 

[wuvmybetta]

Awesome, I hope mine grows like that. I see what you're saying about the duckweed,that makes perfect sense. Especially since it's a small container,it would pretty much be taking food from the daphnia,right?
It came in the bag with the culture,that guy had it everywhere, I told him it would probably die since I'm SOOO good at killing plants that I can't even grow duckweed. And here I was ready to tell all those who laughed at me for that "In your face!" when I saw what a great success the duckweed was. I've noticed the daphnia either hang out and/or get tangled up in it.
Thanks for the tip,I'll take it out right away. Show me your set up.

 

[cation]

Thanks for throwing me a bone,Ms.Jen Seriously, it really is interesting though. I told Tuesday that I may just give up fish and focus solely on raising fish food B)

Comin' from the lady who hates to feed her cultures....That is pretty funny!

Are you covering the container, or just leaving it open?

 

[wuvmybetta]

Open. My husband sneers at it everytime he walks outside I'm thinking of a mesh covering of sorts to keep the mosquitoes out. I'm also,possibly considering a couple mosquito fish. Possibly. They mght eat all of my daphnia. Or not. Maybe. Ya never know.
You hate feeding your cultures? Really? I kinda get into it I just started the worms on sweet taters mixed with rab food and fish food, since I read a thread by Colin in TCC. I can't wait to see how they do

 

[cation]

No, I thought YOU hated feeding your cultures. I could swear you said that about the grindals when we were talking about harvesting methods.

Could be all the crack I'm smoking, though...

"I'm NOT crazy and I'm NOT smoking crack...."

-Dave Chapelle

 

[GuppyDude]

i thoght daphia were really small, like new baby betta diet small... those look pretty big to me. iv got these little white worm things that i culture for baby fish, have no idea where they came from but they multiply so fast that i have to freeze them some times so that it doesn't get out of hand.

 

[wuvmybetta]

No, I thought YOU hated feeding your cultures. I could swear you said that about the grindals when we were talking about harvesting methods.

Could be all the crack I'm smoking, though...

"I'm NOT crazy and I'm NOT smoking crack...."

                                                -Dave Chapelle

Oooooh, no. I may have said that in a PMS moment
"Everybody always wants food around here!! And now the damn food wants food too!!! Arrrggghhhhh"
*throws chair*
Yeah.. I can see me saying that
Poor Dave, the guy can't even leave and have some time alone, sheesh. Adult swim had a "Please come back,Dave. We miss you" commercial and I was like..what the fudge?
"We don't want to wait for fresh,new programming!!" Waaah, entertain us!"
I'd leave too.


Guppydude, these are even a smaller species of daphnia. Some of them are huge. But they give birth to live young so you can put big ones in a fry tank if you're going to be gone for a few days and the fry will eat off the young. I love em,they're so neat! I want them to thrive
*crosses fingers*

 

[Bettaman]

yea was going to do today before i went to work but got called in early so didn't have time will get a picture is great when you Can just dip in a net and its full with thousands of dapnia......you can harvest about 25% every day if you wanted as they really multiply fast and as you say they can give birth in fry tanks....i use very fine net to catch the really small ones and they are as small as BBS when born..just keep the water oxygenated thats why i use pond plant in mine and green it will clear but there is still algae in there......

 

[WILDER]

this might be hellpful
http/www.skepticalaquarist.com/docs/feeding/daphnia.shtml

 

[Bettaman]

EXCUSE THE BITS IN THE BATH STRING FROM SOAP ON A ROPE.....

A NET FULL EVERY TIME

 

[wuvmybetta]

Awesome. And a nice clean net full like that would be virtually impossible with duckweed. I'm jealous, mine looks dinky next to yours
Fantastic.

 

[Bettaman]

i did that just as going to work as don't get back till its dark so that net full is small have more in the net when i move it around yours will grow just give it a couple of weeks and you will see the difference in how many you get out at one time about a $1.00 of daphnia their if buying from a lfs in the UK thats why i culture my own...... if you look closley at second picture you can just about see me juts getting ready to get in for my bath............