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[Killietalk] Dissing Daphnia ?
I believe that a retailer named Earl Schneider in New York wrote a couple of
books on fish care in which he did have some analyses of Daphnia made.
(Schneider was the original publisher of the Pet Library series, before TFH
bought it.) I think it was from one of those books that I got the idea that
Daphnia were mostly shell and water. If I recall correctly, Schneider was
prompted to do these analyses because virtually everyone in the NY/NJ area at
the time swore by the critter. "Portions" of live Daphnia were sold in most
pet shops, and several people made something of a living collecting and
distributing it to these shops. Their collecting localities were deep, dark
secrets, but everyone knew they were getting the stuff from ponds in Canarsie
and Pelham. Many of us went on Daphnia hunts on early weekend mornings,
long-handled nets and all...
Some years ago, Daphnia and some related creatures enjoyed serious popularity as
test organisms in aquatic toxicology. There were several labs here that were
breeding Daphnia by the bucketful to serve their needs, and I was able to
harvest their surplus. Some days, buckets and buckets of Daphnia---more than I
could use. I was breeding large numbers of blue gularis, gold lyretails and
gardneri Akure then, selling them locally to help finance my research, and I
was very impressed with the yields of eggs that I got when feeding Daphnia. I
have never been able to explain this, and I would agree that it needs some
looking into.
Bruce J. Turner
Dept. Biol. Sci.
VIRGINIA TECH
Blacksburg, VA 24061
(540)-231-7444 (V)
"...We are Hokies. We will prevail..."
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