it's a good day for collecting live food

[fish48]

collected my first lot of daphnia this year and the fish just love it
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[JuiceBox52]

Awesome!

 

[Retired Viking]

Cool, they really look like they love it, wish you had made a video it would be fun to watch.

 

[Munroco]

Wow thats a nice crop of daphnia.

 

[Velatelen]

collected my first lot of daphnia this year and the fish just love it

Did you start this from a kit? Like how did you get them?

 

[Herpin Man]

It sounds like they were collected from the wild.
If so, what is your technique?
It would take me hours to get that many using my methods.

 

[fish48]

They are daphnia pulex wild collected I Began collecting and cultivating my own live foods 30 years ago and with more than 30 tanks of live- bearing fish , i needed to cut the cost of buying prepared foods back in the day most LFS shops sold live foods and I soon learnt that live food was and is very beneficial

 

[Velatelen]

So no tips on how to harvest from the wild?

 

[fish48]

in this large water Butt culture daphnia moina it's a very small type. ideal for feeding very small egg laying Fry
all you need to do is feed it with brewers or bakers yeast,

 

[Colin_T]

So no tips on how to harvest from the wild?

Try to avoid collecting daphnia from ponds with water birds or fish in. Ponds that dry up over summer are the best. Go there in winter and spring and you can usually see clouds of daphnia moving through the water.

Get a 10-12 inch fine mesh fish net and move it a figure 8 motion in a pond.
Put contents in a white bucket with water from the pond.
Check bucket for unwanted things like dragonfly larvae.
Take daphnia home and put in a container of green water.
Scoop baby daphnia out and put in a new container of green water. Do this for several batches of young to help get a clean strain that is free of parasites that can infect fish.

The following link has info on culturing green water and infusoria, which daphnia will feed on.

Back to Basics when Breeding Fish

STARTING OUT Make sure you have a pair, (1 male + 1 female). There is nothing worse than spending your hard-earned dollars buying a couple of fish to try and breed and ending up with a pair of fish of the same sex. Let's face it, to reproduce fish you need a male and a female. Two males won't do...

www.fishforums.net

 

[fish48]

Culturing daphnia

The easiest method to culture daphnia is to use old fish tank water so when i do a water change i pour the water into large bucket or container when i have a fish tank going through an algae Bloom i use the green water it's also beneficial. once container is filled with the fish tank water i just had a few daphnia,

Feeding daphnia

Daphnia cultures can be kept almost any where and In any suitable type of container. I have cultures in my fish room and outside in water butts.

When feeding i use one of two methods i boil spinach liquidise it and use both the spinach and boiled water then slowly pour into the daphnia culture.

The second method is less time consuming is to feed brewers or bakers yeast i add 1 teaspoon of yeast to a jar of water mix until it goes milky then slowly pour into water until it goes slightly cloudy the daphnia will start feeding straight away and after a few days the water will start to clear i then repeat process several times before harvesting

 

[emeraldking]

Well, with spring coming up next month I´ll start culturing my own daphnia culture again in the backyard. Works perfectly each year.

 

[vanalisa]

Yikes!
I have been thinking about how to go about getting live food. I don't think I would do this...Any experience with worms?

 

[fish48]

list of live foods that I culture
earthworms, white worms, grindal worms, microworms,
other live foods. flightless fruit flies, vinegar eels, daphnia pulex, daphnia moina,
all of above are easy to culture

 

[Velatelen]

Back to daphnia for a secco day. Possible stupid question incoming. If I go to my local canal and dip a fine mesh net through the water I will have daphnia in it?