Re: [Killietalk] spinach in a blender for daphnia food?`

["Scott Davis" <unclescott at prodigy_net>]

> cant you also use gerbers baby food
> strained green peas instead of spinach

There's a lot of things one can use to feed Daphnia. If there isn't one
already, it might be useful to prepare a web page and let people add their
suggestions.

Spinach is still included in all sorts of recipes for home made fish foods
and pastes. I recall feeding canned spinach to my livebearers 45 years ago.

There has been a concern expressed over the presence of  oxalic acid in
spinach. This may be a bigger deal to herp keepers.

If spinach is only a part of the larger diet of Daphnia or fish, I wonder if
it need be a problem. There is an article noting that if it is grown without
heavy nitrate based fertilizers and allowed to grow in cool conditions, the
oxalic acid will be much less just because of a naturally occurring enzyme
in the spinach.

Pea soup, all sorts of baby foods, a variety of flours, teas from various
hays, very composted manure, various manure teas, grass and garden pulling
tea, soy bean meal, cotton seed meal, pablum, lab cultures of one cell
algae, plain old aquarium water, bran and liver infusions, Boston lettuce,
dry buttermilk, alfalfa meal, small animal entrails, bacteria generated from
all of these and even fish oils put on the surface of outdoor ponds to kill
predatory insects. Needham, et al's Culture Methods For Invertebrate Animals
even has an article including the hamster which died in the lab. (Not quite
Bill Vannerson's cat in a pond.)

A lot of the above are from Needham's collection of articles. Charles
Master's Encyclopedia of Live Foods, Jocker's Live Foods fir Aquarium &
Terrarium Animals, and Manual for the Culture of Selected Freshwater
Invertebrates, S.G. Lawrence ed.  would be among those sources giving more.
Do a "McDaphnia" search on Google too.

However the Needham book most highly recommends greenwater and/or
Fleischmann's yeast. Since I never get the yeast quite right, overfeed and
suffocate too many cultures, greenwater, which will coexist with daphnia,
even reproducing, is still my food of first choice. ;)

All the best!
Scott




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