Keeping daphnia alive?

[Flighty Zeus]

Hey!

Is there an easy way to keep daphnia alive? They always die for me.

Thanks!!


Kim

[craycrayfish]

Make sure you start with aged aquarium water, a small 5 gallon bucket with a cheap led running about 12-18 hours a day will provide plankton for them to eat. Try feeding them every other day depending on the size of the culture with the water from rinsed off rice (dont use tap). The cloudy water has plenty of food for them. I would just rinse 1/8 - 1/2 a cup of rice depending on culture size. Also some floaters, moss, and a few snails will help out a lot. Also, if you should re-mineralize the water unless you are using tap since they require Ca for their exoskeletons. Also if your culture dies out don't get rid of it as depending on how long they were there, you might have eggs at the bottom of the culture that you can restart cultures. You should do a water change ~20% every 2 weeks-ish with your aquarium water and do not vacuum the bottom, just cover your hose with with netting or panty hose. a small amount of black worms to clean the substrate and some seed shrimp as they co-exist pretty well in cultures. Also if you want them to produce eggs you place them in complete darkness for a day or 2 and they will think its autumn and begin producing egg pods that will drop to the bottom. There's way more in-depth material on raising them so I recommend some youtube videos if you want a better understanding.

[Flighty Zeus]

Hey!

Thank you so much! I will see if we have any dry rice to wash.

Make sure you start with aged aquarium water, a small 5 gallon bucket with a cheap led running about 12-18 hours a day will provide plankton for them to eat. Try feeding them every other day depending on the size of the culture with the water from rinsed off rice (dont use tap). The cloudy water has plenty of food for them. I would just rinse 1/8 - 1/2 a cup of rice depending on culture size. Also some floaters, moss, and a few snails will help out a lot. Also, if you should re-mineralize the water unless you are using tap since they require Ca for their exoskeletons. Also if your culture dies out don't get rid of it as depending on how long they were there, you might have eggs at the bottom of the culture that you can restart cultures. You should do a water change ~20% every 2 weeks-ish with your aquarium water and do not vacuum the bottom, just cover your hose with with netting or panty hose. a small amount of black worms to clean the substrate and some seed shrimp as they co-exist pretty well in cultures. Also if you want them to produce eggs you place them in complete darkness for a day or 2 and they will think its autumn and begin producing egg pods that will drop to the bottom. There's way more in-depth material on raising them so I recommend some youtube videos if you want a better understanding.

[SamSam563]

Be careful i used to keep daphnia in a bucket outside but it eventually got infested with mosquitoes.
Have fun!

[Flighty Zeus]

Be careful i used to keep daphnia in a bucket outside but it eventually got infested with mosquitoes.
Have fun!

Thanks!! I'm keeping the daphnia in the living room by the aquarium. I've actually fed most of them to my fish. I now have tiny, tiny, tiny baby daphnia in the container! But, to be honest, mosquito larvae would make my betta fish SO VERY HAPPY!! It wouldn't be **that** big of a deal if I did try to keep them outside.

[SamSam563]

I was warned on this website by some members that it is illegal to keep mosquito larvae in container outside.

I did it for a while before i got warned but you really have to keep up with the harvest.
I think if you miss 3 day harvest, thats enough time for the larvae to start hatching and cause nuisance hence why i think they are banned in Cali.

It is really fun to watch betta fish eat mosquito larvae though cuz u know thats what they eat in the wild. The colors of the betta fish can really perk up from eating live foods