# [Wet Thumb Forum]-culturing daphnia



## MyraVan (Feb 13, 2005)

Daphia are not normally thought of as pets, but when I see them swim in the live food bags at the fish shop, they look really cool, and my fish love them as well. It might be nice to set up a small, low-maintenance tank with daphnia and maybe other small things. Every now and then I could harvest some for my fish. 

I see from past messages that several people here keep daphnia (notably Miss Fishy and Betty). Can you give me some hints and tips on how one could do this?


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## flagg (Nov 29, 2004)

MyraVan:

You can check out the info at The Bug Farm, from whom you can also buy daphnia if you need to.

http://www.livefoodcultures.com/Daphnia.html

--ricardo


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## DataGuru (Mar 11, 2005)

I think apple snails and daphnia should go well together cuz the daphnia could eat the infusarium from the apple snail poop. You'd also probably need to feed them as well with a solution of yeast and crushed fish food. It should work tho as long as you don't overfeed them and foul up the water.


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## MyraVan (Feb 13, 2005)

I was indeed thinking along the lines of apple snail + daphnia. Apple snails are great animals in themselves, and they are indeed good at providing infusoria (I think mine was helpful in allowing my white cloud mountain minnow fry to live).

Any opinions on benefits or harm of water movment or aeration in the apple snail + daphnia tank? I have seen conflicting info here...


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## Miss Fishy (May 13, 2006)

Dear MyraVan, 

In my experience, tiny water creatures that swim around (as opposed to worms and flatworms that mainly crawl on things) do much better without any water movement at all. One of my tanks still has an empty canister filter running on it, and this is the only tank where small swimming creatures do not survive; they get blown around the tank and sucked into the filter. 

As Betty said, you would probably need to supplement the infusoria from the snails with yeast, green water or fishfood, especially if you want to grow enough Daphnia to feed your fish sometimes. Daphnia are filter feeders, i.e. they can only eat food that they encounter in the water when swimming around, so they can't scour every surface looking for food like snails, worms etc. 

From Alex.


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## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

Miss Fishy is right on.

I've also heard from our marine folk that the vortex action within the powerheads kills protozoa. 

It's not surprising. Imagine yourself as a small creature being sucked into the the blades and turbine action of a powerfilter. Pretty scary!


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## cecilia (Jul 24, 2004)

Hi,

I have a very low-tech (but maybe not very estethic) 1,5 g setup with pond Daphnia (unknown species), pond snails (Physa sp) and a few strands of Utricularia gibba. There is a thin layer of peat as a substrate, light is provided by a 4W low-energy lamp. No changes of water since April when I brought the daphnia in, but some Lemna minor that is harvested now and then. Except for that, the "system" if self-sustaining, with no extra food for the daphnia (or the bladderwort







)

Best regards, Cecilia


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## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

This is beginning to sound like as much fun as keeping fish!


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## Endlersmom (Feb 29, 2004)

I will be getting some daphnia soon.

I have read many articles on breeding them.

I would like to know if anyone has had any sucess breeding them in a breeder net in an aquarium.

The tank has green water.

I plan to start a culture in its own container.

Daphnia produced will be put into tanks, they will most likly be eaten.


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## DataGuru (Mar 11, 2005)

As long as the algae can flow into the breeder net it should be fine. tho I've heard of fish sucking daphnia out of breeder nets.

I recently set up a bare bottom 10 gallon with green water, daphnia, ramshorn snails and a sponge filter. It's getting direct sunlight for part of the day and has 20 watts of 6500K light over it so I'm hoping I can strike a balance between feeding the daphnia to the fish and keeping green water going to grow the daphnia.


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## Jane of Upton (Jul 28, 2005)

This site also has some good information on daphnia. A few of the links no longer work, but its worth visiting:

http://www.caudata.org/daphnia/

Also, there is a supplier called

http://www.lfscultures.com/cultures.html

and I've been looking at them on

https://www2.carolina.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Cat...vel=4&bottom=Y&top=N

I've been thinking of looking into culturing daphnia as well. Being in the Northeast, I'd have to do so in my basement. I've also been considering vinegar eels, or scuds. Anyone else out there have firsthand experience? I have read one person mentioned that they introduced scuds into a tank with Cherry Shrimp, and now they can't get rid of them because its a shrimp-only tank.

-Jane


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## Endlersmom (Feb 29, 2004)

Betty may you please describe your light to me. What type of bulb.

Good Luck with the green water. I think in a tank it is either a hit or miss thing.

Maybe I should put a hard breeder container in the net. 

Water will still flow.

Jane,
I also need to get a tank in the basement. The daphnia would not survive the heat upstairs in the summer. That will be my breeding tank. That tank needs to be set up and cycled.

My idea is to grow green water the add it to the tank.

I am hoping I can keep the ones I am given alive in the breeder net, until, I can get them in a container of their own.

Jane I have not even heard of scuds before. So much to learn. 

Maybe you can put them in a new topic. That way no one misses your question about them.


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## DataGuru (Mar 11, 2005)

It's one of those screw in compact fluorescent bulbs in a floor lamp.

Keeping the green water separate from the daphnia and feeding them daily would be the safest way to go. But you gotta be careful. LOL I ended up with daphnia in my green water bucket.

Also daphnia magna would be less apt to get out of a breeder net cuz they're larger than moinia. I got mine from Dallas Discus.

Vinegar eels are the easiest culture there is. They're itty bitty tho. You grow them in half water, half vinegar with some apple pieces in it. to feed, strain thru a coffee filter and then rinse. 

I like wingless fruit flies. Or rather, the angels and swordtails love em. Not hard to culture.


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## MyraVan (Feb 13, 2005)

I've finally got around to growing some daphnia. I was recently at the fish shop and wanted to buy some live food as a treat for my fishies, but noticed that the daphnia were quite small. I thought I'd try to grow them a bit bigger before feeding them to my fish. So I bought a couple of packets of the live ones and set them up in a 1 gallon jug we're not using (it's a Brita water filter jug). I added some Java fern on the bottom for decoration and some water lettuce on top to take care of ammonia and put it on a windowsill in a south window.

This was a week and two days ago. Now the jug doesn't look so great since something has grown on the walls, perhaps some form of algae. But there is no ammonia or nitrite at all, thanks to the plant. My little "bugs" are still bouncing around, but they don't seem to have grown much -- the biggest ones are still under 3mm. Perhaps I have a species that doesn't get very big, or perhaps it's too cold for them to grow much, or perhaps I'm not doing soemthing right...

I've been feeding them yeast, the fast action dried yeast that we use in our breadmaker to make bread, but I've now also got some Liquifry #1 that I will try on them. 

There are definitely other things in there besides daphnia. In the attached picture, I'm sure the thing in the top left of the photo is a daphnia, but does anyone recognize the beatie in the middle, with the two little things sticking out of the top left part of it?


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## MyraVan (Feb 13, 2005)

Ooops, I forgot to attach the picture.


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## DataGuru (Mar 11, 2005)

They could be one the smaller species of daphnia. If you want larger daphnia see if you can find daphnia magna. Dunno what the other beastie is.









Here's a thread on how I have my daphnia culture set up.


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## Miss Fishy (May 13, 2006)

The creature below the Daphnia is a Cyclops. Fish like to eat them if they are quick enough to catch them! 

Nice green water tank, Betty! How much Miracle Grow fertiliser do you add to it, and how often? 

From Alex.


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## DataGuru (Mar 11, 2005)

I just added around a half teaspoon of miracle grow when it was first set up. Haven't added any since... I've just been topping it off with discard water from the goldfish tank (which is high in nitrAtes). I'm also feeding the snails well.

hmmm I wonder if blackworms would work in the green water tank. I currently have blackworms in another tub with bunches of plants.


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## DataGuru (Mar 11, 2005)

I think something's eating my daphnia. I saw a dragonfly larvae in the green water tank a few days ago. They can eat fry, so I'll betcha they're feasting on the daphnia.


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## DataGuru (Mar 11, 2005)

and lookie what I found when I strained the green water!









Very well fed dragonfly larvae!


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## Miss Fishy (May 13, 2006)

No wonder the Daphnia were disappearing! What did you do with all those larvae? 

From Alex.


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## DataGuru (Mar 11, 2005)

I dunno what to do with them. They're in a bowl on the dining room table at the moment.


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## Miss Fishy (May 13, 2006)

If you don't mind killing them, the larvae would make a good snack for the Goldfish! When I had some large Goldfish one of their favourite treats was crunchy praying mantis. If one had the misfortune to fall into the pond it would be gone in a second. I bet dragonfly larvae wouldn't last long. 

From Alex.


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## sb483 (May 29, 2006)

I just got my shipment of daphnia in the mail - most of it went into my 55 gal, the rest went into my 33 gal. Ideally I'd love to have the daphnia hang around in both tanks, but I've read even a _single _fish in a tank filled with daphnia can wipe the whole population out pretty quicky. From what I've seen they don't really have any self-defense mechanisms, instead of running into the dense "grass" (a field of lillaeopsis & tenellus) they just hang out in open water where everyone can see and eat them.

Back to this thread's topic, I removed some daphnia to keep in a very small holding jar, with green water. If they make it (I've never cultured daphnia before so I don't know), then I'll try out my "daphia-tank" idea.

Here it goes: the small jar is actually a POM bottle (you know, the long slender POM tea bottles, see below):









For a few weeks now I've been keeping species-plant-jars. In the pic below, top is glossostigma, right is lillaeopsis, middle is ceratopteris, left is rotala wallichii, and bottom is some daphnia I'm hoping will multiply [and just plain water in the one with lid]:









So, the plan is if the daphnia multiply, then I'll take some and place a few in each planted cup. How's that for a "mini-tank"? [The idea of bettas in these cups crossed my mind but seemed a bit cruel.] If the daphnia multiply, I'll add them in and take some more pics.


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## DataGuru (Mar 11, 2005)

So what are you feeding them?


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## sb483 (May 29, 2006)

DataGuru said:


> So what are you feeding them?


Green water algae. The slight green tinge you see in the photo above is algae. I also have a jar outside which is thick, like pea soup. I'll see which jar (if any) gives me a higher yield.


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## Miss Fishy (May 13, 2006)

Cute "nano jars"! If the Daphnia do multiply and you put some in the planted jars, will you feed them green water or something else? 

By the way, if the Daphnia don't work out, there are other little creatures that are interesting for very tiny tanks, like ostracods and Cyclops. 

From Alex.


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## sb483 (May 29, 2006)

Here's one of the nano-POM jars:
*rotala wallichii*














There are actually little water bugs floating around. Can't say if they're daphnia, since I didn't put them in here.


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## sb483 (May 29, 2006)

*ceratopteris thalictroides​*












Some Indian Fern. There are tiny snails crawling around (in this and all other jars).


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## sb483 (May 29, 2006)

*glossostigma elatinoides​*












This is a pretty tiny ecosystem.


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## sb483 (May 29, 2006)

*lilaeopsis brasiliensis​*





I added two shots from the front, the little bugs (daphnia? I didn't place any in here) moving about are (slightly) easier to see that way.


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## ADeWilde (Jun 20, 2006)

What algae is present in green water cultures? Is it just a melange of whatever algae grows, or a single species? I've heard people refer to cyanobacterial outbreaks as "green water". I am also interested in keeping daphnia but would like to culture my own green water, if anyone knows what kind of algae are in green water it may make it easier to culture. For instance if it is cyanobacteria then you would be more likely to have success if you cultures them in water with very low available nitrogen.


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