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Daphnia
- Thread starter Spikeanator
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don't worry about disease or anything (unless the lake is polluted or something). You can get them from lakes and ponds. You can even make a "plankton net" and catch tons of copepods, daphnia and others.
it's also kind of easy to culture daphnia but you just have to be careful for them not to eat all the algae and then starve to death...
ok, so how to catch them. You can either just go out and dip a jar into the water, or you can make a plankton net.
to culture them it's best to go to a lake that has free swimming algae (have you seen those fake-looking lakes that are all green?) just go there, take some water, add a little of fertilizer, and put it in a well light place. When there's plenty of algae, you can add daphnia and you'll have tons of them in no time. (be sure to start new jars of algae so they don't eat it all)
for the plankton net-
1.take a nylon stocking cut off the ends so you just have a tube.
2. bend the end of wire hanger into a loop
3. sow one end of the nylon stalking around the loop
4. tie/glue/whatever a small container (gerbers or something) to the other end of the stocking
5. go out to the lake and just ... use the net like you would any other net
and ta-da you have TONS of plankton for your utrics/etc.
or... you could waste your money and time finding/buying daphnia from a store... i've heard they sell them but I've never seen any.
edit: here are some sites:
daphnia collecting and discoveries
anatomy of a daphnia
random site
it's also kind of easy to culture daphnia but you just have to be careful for them not to eat all the algae and then starve to death...
ok, so how to catch them. You can either just go out and dip a jar into the water, or you can make a plankton net.
to culture them it's best to go to a lake that has free swimming algae (have you seen those fake-looking lakes that are all green?) just go there, take some water, add a little of fertilizer, and put it in a well light place. When there's plenty of algae, you can add daphnia and you'll have tons of them in no time. (be sure to start new jars of algae so they don't eat it all)
for the plankton net-
1.take a nylon stocking cut off the ends so you just have a tube.
2. bend the end of wire hanger into a loop
3. sow one end of the nylon stalking around the loop
4. tie/glue/whatever a small container (gerbers or something) to the other end of the stocking
5. go out to the lake and just ... use the net like you would any other net
and ta-da you have TONS of plankton for your utrics/etc.
or... you could waste your money and time finding/buying daphnia from a store... i've heard they sell them but I've never seen any.
edit: here are some sites:
daphnia collecting and discoveries
anatomy of a daphnia
random site
some of them are pretty small, others are pretty big. there's this huge nocturnal one but I really don't see you catching any so forget about that one. The biggest ones i've seen would fit inside this "O" nicely (well... maybe a little bigger...)
if you want to culture them, make sure you don't have any copepods or hydra... cuz they'll eat them in no time.
if you want to culture them, make sure you don't have any copepods or hydra... cuz they'll eat them in no time.
There's a lot of places on the Internet you can buy clean Daphnia cultures. Do a search on "live food cultures" and you should find a bunch.
Florida aqua farms (https://3kserver7.com/~frank/secure/agora.cgi) sells a product call Roti-Rich or something like that and daphnia thrive off of that. Then you don't need to concern yourself with greenwater culture. I think they sell daphnia too.
Of coarse if you have the space, growing greenwater is as easy as setting up a tub of water out of the way someplace and tossing a few rabbit turds in there and coming back in a week or two. Daphnia love this stuff!
When you grow daphnia, you can tell by the color how they're doing. If they have a reddish color, there's plenty of O2 in the water and they'll be breeding parthanigenicly (SP?) (female clones of the parent mothers. Mostly females) and if they turn (more) brownish there is less O2 and they will start to develop more males and the females will develop resting eggs the fall to the bottom of the water and sit there until conditions are better and start the cycle all over again.
So if you see them swimming around and they have little dark dots on them and then all of a sudden they're gone. Just leave the setup as is and wait awhile and they will probably come back.
If you can find Moina (Another, smaller type of daphnia) starter culture they might be better because adult Moina are just a little bigger then newly hatched brine shrimp and easily munched on by aquadic CPs.
Dan
Florida aqua farms (https://3kserver7.com/~frank/secure/agora.cgi) sells a product call Roti-Rich or something like that and daphnia thrive off of that. Then you don't need to concern yourself with greenwater culture. I think they sell daphnia too.
Of coarse if you have the space, growing greenwater is as easy as setting up a tub of water out of the way someplace and tossing a few rabbit turds in there and coming back in a week or two. Daphnia love this stuff!
When you grow daphnia, you can tell by the color how they're doing. If they have a reddish color, there's plenty of O2 in the water and they'll be breeding parthanigenicly (SP?) (female clones of the parent mothers. Mostly females) and if they turn (more) brownish there is less O2 and they will start to develop more males and the females will develop resting eggs the fall to the bottom of the water and sit there until conditions are better and start the cycle all over again.
So if you see them swimming around and they have little dark dots on them and then all of a sudden they're gone. Just leave the setup as is and wait awhile and they will probably come back.
If you can find Moina (Another, smaller type of daphnia) starter culture they might be better because adult Moina are just a little bigger then newly hatched brine shrimp and easily munched on by aquadic CPs.
Dan
singular is parthenogenesis... and apparently that would be parthenogenetically which if you ask me doesn't make sense since genesis and genetically are two totally different things...[b said:
growing algae with them will keep them happy because the algae produces O2.
by the way... I know nobody said they were but algae are NOT plants!
par-then-o from Greek, from parthenos, virgin
gen·e·sis (jn-ss) KEY
NOUN:
pl. gen·e·ses (-sz) KEY
The coming into being of something; the origin.
par·the·no·gen·e·sis (pärth-n-jn-ss) KEY
NOUN:
A form of reproduction in which an unfertilized egg develops into a new individual, occurring commonly among insects and certain other arthropods.
ETYMOLOGY:
New Latin : Greek parthenos, virgin + genesis
Well, yeah. I guess I should have wrote "reproducing" rather then "breeding", I stand corrected, sort of. . .
Basically, when conditions are good, Temps, food, water quality, they reproduce parthenogenetically (sorry I spelled it wrong) The females produce unfertilized eggs of more females (clones)that pop out and swim around doing their thing. When conditions change, some males start to develop and they mate and then the females start to develop resting eggs that drop to the bottom and wait for better times.
I raised Daphnia Magna and Monia for more then ten years to feed aquarium fish I used to have and in my experience they general cycle was like this.
Winter, The tub was frozen solid, I used a 55 gallon plastic drum, no Daphnia (obviously)
Late winter, the tub wasn't solid ice anymore. If I broke the ice on top there was usually some, but not a lot of Daphnia swimming around.
Some time between late winter and early spring, The Algae would start to bloom fertilized by the dead Daphnia and algae from last year.
Throughout spring and summer, The Algae would bloom, and then the Daphnia would bloom, eat all the algae and then start to die off when there wasn't enough algae. Once the over population of Daphnia was gone. Either from me harvesting them or a die off, the algae would come back, and then this cycle would start over again.
That is until it got too hot. Then the males & resting egg stuff would start. Then there would be either no Daphnia at all or just a very few swimming around struggling in the heat but if a hot spell lasted more then a week there would be no Daphnia at all.
Late Summer and Fall. As the water cooled, the resting eggs would start to hatch and then back to the usual cycle until the water temps dropped to around 35f or 40f. Then there would be much fewer Daphnia but they'd stay around until the water finally froze solid. If I used Roti-rich I could still get harvestable quantities.
Monia are much more heat tolerant but less resistant to cold.
I also raised them indoors in a 20L tank using roti-rich all year in smaller but stable quantities. I used a sponge filter in the tank with a lot of extra airation. No heater with a 20w flourecent tube.
gen·e·sis (jn-ss) KEY
NOUN:
pl. gen·e·ses (-sz) KEY
The coming into being of something; the origin.
par·the·no·gen·e·sis (pärth-n-jn-ss) KEY
NOUN:
A form of reproduction in which an unfertilized egg develops into a new individual, occurring commonly among insects and certain other arthropods.
ETYMOLOGY:
New Latin : Greek parthenos, virgin + genesis
Well, yeah. I guess I should have wrote "reproducing" rather then "breeding", I stand corrected, sort of. . .
Basically, when conditions are good, Temps, food, water quality, they reproduce parthenogenetically (sorry I spelled it wrong) The females produce unfertilized eggs of more females (clones)that pop out and swim around doing their thing. When conditions change, some males start to develop and they mate and then the females start to develop resting eggs that drop to the bottom and wait for better times.
I raised Daphnia Magna and Monia for more then ten years to feed aquarium fish I used to have and in my experience they general cycle was like this.
Winter, The tub was frozen solid, I used a 55 gallon plastic drum, no Daphnia (obviously)
Late winter, the tub wasn't solid ice anymore. If I broke the ice on top there was usually some, but not a lot of Daphnia swimming around.
Some time between late winter and early spring, The Algae would start to bloom fertilized by the dead Daphnia and algae from last year.
Throughout spring and summer, The Algae would bloom, and then the Daphnia would bloom, eat all the algae and then start to die off when there wasn't enough algae. Once the over population of Daphnia was gone. Either from me harvesting them or a die off, the algae would come back, and then this cycle would start over again.
That is until it got too hot. Then the males & resting egg stuff would start. Then there would be either no Daphnia at all or just a very few swimming around struggling in the heat but if a hot spell lasted more then a week there would be no Daphnia at all.
Late Summer and Fall. As the water cooled, the resting eggs would start to hatch and then back to the usual cycle until the water temps dropped to around 35f or 40f. Then there would be much fewer Daphnia but they'd stay around until the water finally froze solid. If I used Roti-rich I could still get harvestable quantities.
Monia are much more heat tolerant but less resistant to cold.
I also raised them indoors in a 20L tank using roti-rich all year in smaller but stable quantities. I used a sponge filter in the tank with a lot of extra airation. No heater with a 20w flourecent tube.
interesting... I grew mine in a mayo jar[b said:
where did you get the definitions? is there like an online surfix dictionary or something?
There is a link on my yahoo home page to look up words. Those definitions came from The American Heritage Dictionary. I mean't to reference that but forgot.
I would think that a jar a small as your's would be too small to mantain a healthy culture for long. I moved and no longer have my fish or my barrels of daphnia but I still do have a 3/4 gallon jar that has some daphnia in it but they die off and then I get a population of other copapods, mostly ostrocods, for a while. then they die off and the daphnia come back. That's been going on now for about 15 years. I had is sealed for most of that time with no water changes. Frankly, it did better when I left it alone in a basement window.
The water in it is a slightly yellowish green but I've never had an algae bloom in it and it never produces enough of anything to be usful for anything but looking at. I suppose if you were to grow green water in a seperate container and transfered it into the daphnia culture when doing water changes you could get a better population growth, You should probably mantain several greenwater cultures for each daphnia culture or use roti-rich, that stuff really worked for me, maybe even better then greenwater.
I would think that a jar a small as your's would be too small to mantain a healthy culture for long. I moved and no longer have my fish or my barrels of daphnia but I still do have a 3/4 gallon jar that has some daphnia in it but they die off and then I get a population of other copapods, mostly ostrocods, for a while. then they die off and the daphnia come back. That's been going on now for about 15 years. I had is sealed for most of that time with no water changes. Frankly, it did better when I left it alone in a basement window.
The water in it is a slightly yellowish green but I've never had an algae bloom in it and it never produces enough of anything to be usful for anything but looking at. I suppose if you were to grow green water in a seperate container and transfered it into the daphnia culture when doing water changes you could get a better population growth, You should probably mantain several greenwater cultures for each daphnia culture or use roti-rich, that stuff really worked for me, maybe even better then greenwater.
No. daphnia and ostrods aren't copepods my mistake.
You can use yeast but it can get out of control easy. One problem is that if you use too much you just polluted the jug. You can also turn it into a yeast culture which will kill the daphnia. For a while I was trying to use yeast in aerated RO water fed with a little agar and sugar and drip some of it into the daphnia culture every couple of days. It was more of a mess then it was worth. I also tried just putting the yeast directly in the daphnia culture. Once in a while was fine but otherwise it fouled the culture.
The problem with fertlizing the algae is if the algae bloom is too thick your daphnia will die of suffacation because algae consume O2 during the night. I did have OK luck using rabbit turds I got from another fish breeder who also had a rabbit along with the associated endless supply of rabbit crap, I used maybe half a dozen pellets per 10 gallons every few weeks. I was growing them in 20, 30 and 55 gallon containers so it wasn't so critcal. So you need to go for a balance which in smaller containers isn't always easy to get.
The water can be green enough that you can't see into it more then a few inches but at that point it's easy for it to go over the edge and you lose the daphnia.
You can use yeast but it can get out of control easy. One problem is that if you use too much you just polluted the jug. You can also turn it into a yeast culture which will kill the daphnia. For a while I was trying to use yeast in aerated RO water fed with a little agar and sugar and drip some of it into the daphnia culture every couple of days. It was more of a mess then it was worth. I also tried just putting the yeast directly in the daphnia culture. Once in a while was fine but otherwise it fouled the culture.
The problem with fertlizing the algae is if the algae bloom is too thick your daphnia will die of suffacation because algae consume O2 during the night. I did have OK luck using rabbit turds I got from another fish breeder who also had a rabbit along with the associated endless supply of rabbit crap, I used maybe half a dozen pellets per 10 gallons every few weeks. I was growing them in 20, 30 and 55 gallon containers so it wasn't so critcal. So you need to go for a balance which in smaller containers isn't always easy to get.
The water can be green enough that you can't see into it more then a few inches but at that point it's easy for it to go over the edge and you lose the daphnia.
LOL. Guinea pig turds would work too. Use only a few and it won't stink at all.
I have an old aquaium book from the 30's, Maybe by Innes, I don't remember and it's in storage now. In it, they say to let you water sit in a sunny place and toss a few handfuls of hay and oats in the water and in a few weeks it'll ripen up and be perfect for water fleas
I have an old aquaium book from the 30's, Maybe by Innes, I don't remember and it's in storage now. In it, they say to let you water sit in a sunny place and toss a few handfuls of hay and oats in the water and in a few weeks it'll ripen up and be perfect for water fleas
Check www.aquabid.com in the foods section they ussually have a two species of daphnia for sale.
-Jc
-Jc
Hello guys! Ok... I have a question. Are these Daphnia temperate organism or I can have them here in the tropics (Puerto Rico). I was about to buy some culture when I saw this topic.
So I want to know if I can find Daphnia in lakes and bogs here in the tropics. Or if they are not native here, If I buy them, will they survive a tropical environment?
AlphaWolf, I see you ahve a lot of knowledge about this, if you can help me, once again, I will apreciate it.
Thank you,
Jorge Joel...
Emilia's Garden
So I want to know if I can find Daphnia in lakes and bogs here in the tropics. Or if they are not native here, If I buy them, will they survive a tropical environment?
AlphaWolf, I see you ahve a lot of knowledge about this, if you can help me, once again, I will apreciate it.
Thank you,
Jorge Joel...
Emilia's Garden
yep, you should find them somewhere there. There are daphnia from alaska to the sea (not nearly as many species but there are some saltwater daphnia... there are also saltwater ostracods and copepods. I don't know about ostracods but I do know there are more saltwater species of copepod than freshwater species and they're the most numerous kind of animal)
If you do order cultures, you should be able to grow them there too.... but don't overheat them... maybe put them in the shade?
If you do order cultures, you should be able to grow them there too.... but don't overheat them... maybe put them in the shade?
