Live daphnia

[wuvmybetta]

I bought a daphnia culture off of eBay, it just arrived. They look delicious I'm really not grasping how exactly the culture works,simple as it may seem, wish me luck

I'm still undecided as to whether I should just put them in an empty 10 or use smaller 1 gallon cultures..I suppose I should have decided that before they arrived.

Anybody have any experience with them?

 

[Grams]

good and which babies are getting the daphnia.

 

[endparenthesis]

http/www.petfish.net/daph.htm

 

[wuvmybetta]

hmmm, great link. I didn't find that one when I was reading up on them the other night, thanks end. I think I'll go pick up a jar of sweet potato baby food, that sounds like it will work to feed them. I think I'll keep them indoors since it gets so hot here.

I wonder if active yeast is the same thing as bakers yeast

UFB~ everybody will get them if I can get my culture going

 

[Grams]

are they bigger than the bbs. and when are you going to start on bloodworms.

 

[wuvmybetta]

They've been eating bloodworms & brine for a week or two. But sheesh, it gets expensive feeding all of them frozen food every,singe meal I was hoping this would ease my wallet a bit

Yes, they're bigger than bbs, they're really neat looking actually. I'm impressed.

I wonder how I should/would/could go about feeding them rabbit pellets I have plenty of those. Maybe soak them in water and pour the water into the tank

 

[Gabe]

I have a bunch of daphnia in a one gallon pickle jar. I started with a few live ones and I put in the old tank water with all the algea scrapings off my betta tanks. They are thriving, no aeration or heater. They are sitting on my dryer in the laundry room. I also added some clippings from my live plants that had tons of algea on them and I noticed a lot more since I put that in.

Good luck with your culture, I'm sure your fish will love them!

Gabe

 

[wuvmybetta]

Thanks Gabe! That makes me feel a lot better. From everything I've read they act like theres a bit of science involved. The same goes for bbs too though, I read about them for weeks and thought "sheesh,this sounds hard, you have to be so precise" but that's not the case at all once I dove in.

I just set up a 10 gallon by a window in the betta room, I took water from all of my tanks, algae shouldn't be too hard to come by

 

[bkk_group]

yah, we are using live daphnia as well, i posted this in my other forum, might as well post it here too

we have introduced a new food source for our plakats and things are working out pretty well. just thought i'd let those of you who may not be familiar with daphnia in on the secret. daphnia are called "water fleas" but are actually crustaceans. we picked up a starter culture from a local breeder a few weeks ago along with a bottle of "green water" to start things off right. green water is water with algae bloom and making it is as simple of placing a bucket of water and a scoop of dirt in the sun for a few days. daphnia thrive on algae. we have a shallow plastic container that we keep on our window sill filled with green water and the little culture of daphnia we started off with is now reproducing on a daily basis, it's crazy, right now thousands of little black spots are swimming around and in a matter of days they will be ready to harvest. some people say to airate the water with stiff tubing to create big bubbles but we haven't bothered with that. probably a good idea though. the breeder we bought the daphnia from gave us a tip on making a suitable food for them if the green water starts to weaken. what we use is a sprinkle of sugar, a sprinkle of powdered condensed milk and a sprinkle of bakers yeast. we grind it all up together and add a bit of water to make it all liquid (never feed daphnia dry yeast). the liquid should be kept in the fridge to stop further growth. every couple of days we will pour a bit of the mixture in and the daphnia go crazy. pretty easy. harvesting is as easy as using a baster or using a course net so only the adults get scooped up. after a while, the water will go bad and we will take the daphnia out by sucking them up with a baster and transfer them into new water (aged water is recommended). they are pretty hard to kill but you want to make sure you don't overfeed them as we almost killed ours by my enthuisiastic overfeeding in the beginning. after that my wife took over feeding duties and things are good fry love it and adults love it too, plus daphnia look pretty cool if you take the time to check em out

 

[wuvmybetta]

Thanks bkk! And I agree,they really are pretty cool My daughter and I were checking them out as they swam about, if you look close enough you can actually see their insides moving, wild. I said "wow,these are almost better than fish!"

I fed them some yeast diluted in water, I could be wrong but it seems like some started eating right away. They were swimming about really fast in the area I fed I was scared I overfed,even though I put in just a squirt so I added more tank water. My hex sits by a window and it always has a tinge of green color to the water so I'm using that. My lfs called and said that the owner has a green pond and if I need water just say the word. I'd hate to rely on another source so I'm hoping that feeding them will work. So far so good. I have raunchy city water so if I leave the light on overnight I should get algae growth really quickly.

 

[Gabe]

Also, I can't remember if it is RO or DEI water, but one of those two will make daphnia explode. Sounds crazy but one of my co-workers did something like a thesis on daphnia and she told me about it. Also if you let their water level or oxygen level get to low they will produce only males and start laying eggs instead of mostly live birth of females. I'm not sure if that little tid bit of info was on the net, but I had a book my boss let me borrow that mentioned that.

Gabe

 

[wuvmybetta]

hmmm,that's interesting about the oxygen level. Everywhere states that they come from still ponds but yet they suggest you add aeration Right now it has nothing,a tank with water and lighting. Should I add some air? It's no biggie if I have to, I have an aerator going by the tank anyway, I can just split a hose. Or do you think frequent water changes will be sufficient?

 

[bkk_group]

marianne at bcbetta doesn't use airation but she does have a sponge filter going on. we don't use airation but every day they are new births (you can see the eggs in the adults) so we must be doing something right

 

[wuvmybetta]

marianne at bcbetta doesn't use airation but she does have a sponge filter going on. we don't use airation but every day they are new births (you can see the eggs in the adults) so we must be doing something right

K then. I'm gonna go with that. If all of you guys are having luck with it

As soon as it starts really booming, I'll be using the hell out of it so I'll ,in turn, be replacing water constantly. Weeee! I'm excited!!

I'm dying to feed them now but I won't. I want my culture to really grow

 

[shrks1fan]

Oooh!! I've been wanting to do the same thing! Good luck with the culture and if it blooms, I'd looooove you forever if you sent me some

Linda