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Re: Live foods
Scott Davis wrote:
> I would put in a good word for looking in waters in which in fish don't
> exist at any time. Some of our temporary ponds may have over flows from
> streams in the spring. While one doesn't hear this warning much now-a-days,
> in the hobby literature of 50 years ago, where a proportionately greater
> number of hobbyists collected Daphnia than now, warnings of Daphnia bearing
> disease organisms were fairly frequent.
My opinion is that many of those warnings were overblown. Just as Barry
has pointed out that blackworms are host to no known fish pathogens, I
have never traced any disease to use of wild-caught Daphnia.
Feeding richer live foods (wild Daphnia, as opposed to yeast-fed) will
foul the water more quickly as the richer nutrients make for more
ammonium and other nitrogenous wastes. That allows opportunistic
diseases a chance to invade. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc...
You won't collect many Daphnia in water containing any substantial fish
population, IMHO. [The main (rare) exceptions are where differential
reproduction rates allow a Daphnia "bloom" that the fish eventually
consume.]
>
> Gotta ponder Wright's observation about "natural foods" for the Daphnia.
> Every spring the wild cherry tree blooms like crazy and then the flowers
> fall into the cultures with the rains. Briefly it is a pain in the neck
> harvesting. But the Daphnia never reproduce better than then.
>
I had the vague feeling that my artificially-fed Daphnia were a crunchy
laxative for my fish, but didn't seem to add much rapid growth. YMMV.
Wright
--
Wright Huntley -- 290 521-0557 -- 731 Loletta Ave, Modesto CA 95351
"...the Middle East,
the inspiration for the
World Wrestling Federation."
-- Ted Roberts --
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