Any quick update on how the project is progressing? I love the idea of growing the daphnia in a jar with plants rather than in bucket tucked in a corner like others do. How is this method coming along? Is it sustainable? Do you get good growth? How is maintenance? Thanks!
Well I have found that the best way to keep it going is to keep the population low by constantly removing daphnia and feeding to my community tank but the population does grow so fast!
@@elvirarivera8598You can but daphnia thrive in green water so they're kinda difficult to observe in their ideal environment. They're also adapted to a boom-and-bust population cycle, a lot like brine shrimp or triops, so expect to find that daphnia will have a population explosion then a subsequent collapse and then you'll need to intervene to restart the colony except under the circumstances where you're carefully maintaining the colony.
Interesting, thank you. I have a jar that I am doing the same exercise in. it's only been set up for 2 weeks but so far so good. I'm going to try your feeding approach :)
This is very informative to culture daphnia. I do have some question, isn’t that daphnia eat algae? What if you don’t do water change and let algae growth for their food source and doesn’t feed them yeast? Will that work in your opinion?
I couldn’t help but feel for the daphnia when you fed them slowly to the fish. They seemed to squirm away from the opening 🙈 I would have just toss them in
I heard to not use an air stone like that since the small bubbles can get trapped in the carapace of the daphnia leading to their death since they will just float to the top. Also, is this daphnia magna? Theyre harder to breed so congrats if you managed to get a colony going
I read about that risk but the air bubbles alone without the stone were super big and loud lol so I’ve been keeping an eye on them and I they seem to be doing fine I haven’t seen any of them stuck at the top yet. I don’t keep the air on all day just for about 2 hours a day so maybe that helps. And I’m not sure! I ordered them off Amazon the seller only referred to them as “water daphnia“ lol
Man. I had quite a bit of daphnia, but ended up dieing. I do have some left in my fry grow out tank. In the main tank though...all dead. Maybe the water wasn't aged enough.
Daphnia are extremely sensitive to phosphates which act as a trigger, low they reproduce like crazy which will quickly raise phosphates through waste so large water changes at least once a week are essential. I've found adding air stones helps them reproduce quickly but isn't necessary and that they will reproduce faster with a diet of spirulina and yeast (2 part yeast 1 spirulina by volume) rather than a green water culture.
Daphnia are intolerant of nitrites specifically. They can tolerate ammonia and nitrates, however. You might have had a nitrite spike that killed off the colony but the other commenter is right about their sensitivity to phosphates as well.
@@ryanboscoe9670Did you fertilize your green water culture? If you don't, I wonder if that (or a lack of light) might be putting a ceiling on the rate of growth that the green water culture is capable of.
definitely need oxygen, but shouldn't use an airstone, the small bubbles can cause oxygen to get trapped under their carapace, and then they float, cant swim or eat and die at surface, use a weighted hose or a rigid air line
Plants consume oxygen at dark time... You want to feed daphnia, ok, but how to feed it with plants? I have same plants, and they became polluted by yeest or green culture leftovers. I don't feed more comparing to your amounts