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Daphnia

Here is my experience with culturing daphnia.
Before I came out here to the western hinterlands (where I still don't have
my fishroom set up) I had put a 300 gal stock tank (the black plastic kind)
in my back yard. I put it in a hedgerow so that it got dappled sunlight. A
lot of leaves fell into it each fall. I seeded it with dapnia bought from a
supplier of pond fish. I suspect they were D. pulex, but I am not sure.
I maintained the culture for about 4 years. I occasionally fed it with a
teaspoonful of dried yeast suspended in water. I was able to harvest
daphnia 2-3 times a week, sometimes up to a couple of ounces in packed
volume. Each year the "pond" would freeze solid. The daphnia always came
back and I would guess are there now (I still have that house in NY).
I suspect that the source of food for these daphnia was infusoria and
bacteria feeding on the leaf mulm on the bottom. I also suspect the water
was soft, as the tank caught the rain, of which we got an appreciable
amount. Finally, I think the large volume helps to make a self sustaining
culture possible. I think it's probably hard work to keep a culture going
in a small container, even feeding it.
Barry

Barry J. Cooper, Prof., Dept. Biomedical Sciences, Cornell University
Current address: 27505 Riggs Hill Rd.
Sweet Home, OR 97386 (bjc3 at cornell_edu)
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