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Daphnia questions, moina link, solving the HTML impasse

Questions to Mcdaphnia and a moina link from George Arndt My (Mcdaphnia) apologies for any changes I made to "de-HTML" George's message.

Can you say anything about the amounts of your food that you add to what 
volume of water with the daphnia. ???

There are too many variables to depend on a rule of thumb; you just have to learn through experience. I look at how many daphnia there are, where they are swimming and whether there are clouds of baby daphnia or cloudiness from bacteria or wild yeast. I also use my nose. I look for Cyclops in the corners, since that means the pH is dropping. All that and whether I will be around a few hours later is taken into account and likely other things too that I just do without thinking about. Usually I add about half a cup of liquified peas per 100 gallons or less and then add more once the water clears. Better to add food more frequently than overfeed. A few hours after feeding is a good time to change water. Wipe the sides and bottom of the container, let it settle, and siphon out the debris into 5 gallon buckets. These can be set on a table to settle again and any daphnia in them siphoned into a net straddling a bucket on the floor. You can avoid some of the water changes by squeezing the liqified pea blend through a brine shrimp net and discarding the solids. Since water changes have to be done anyway, a few more won't hurt. It's just your choice. 

on the half package of frozen peas.  I assume you mean a 1 pound package. 

Yes. 16 oz. the cheaper kind with no added butter.
  
how many and what size containers of water do you use.

Right now I have two rubbermaid 100 stock troughs and one 230 gallon epoxied plywood vat, and a 29 glass tank backup. Before this I used 15 to 20 ten gallon tanks for years. I kind of like the tens over what I'm doing now but I wanted to try this. 

How often do you change the water?

About two or three hours after feeding. If I feed two or three times a day, I need a lot of 5 gallon plastic buckets. I get them at the donut shop after the filling has been put in the pastries, rinse out the cherry, chocolate, and Bavarian creme traces and siphon, siphon, siphon. 

 what temperature and amount of light.  inside or outside 
the house.  in sun or shade.

Inside where dragonfly larvae and possible pathogens can't get them. There is some sunlight in the room, but four foot shop lights with chroma 50's are over the tanks 24/7.

  what strain of daphnia.  are you sure they are 
not moina.  monia seem to give a bigger volume and weight to harvest.

Giant Russian Daphnia -- identifying the strain with some kind of name or origin is a good point, since there are Daphnia and relatives adapted to many environments. What works well with one can kill another.   

I have tried several time to grow daphnia and fail.  but it may be that I do 
not clean the water enough.  my feeling is that if I try to change the water 
I will loose too many of the small daphnia.

Probably the biggest thing a daphnia raiser needs to do is HARVEST! Feeding, water changes, light, etc. are all ways to enhance the growth of daphnia. However removing some daphnia to give space for the rest is all you need to do to keep a stable population of daphnia going for an indefinite time. Stable yes, but too low a population for our purposes! If you feel you don't have enough daphnia to change water, go get another tank and split the culture. You don't ever have to change water if you keep splitting the cultures. :)

also the following site seems to have great information.  and seems to claim 
that moina is better than daphnia.

>From what I've read, moina seem to handle pollution better. Seeing how daphnia is often raised, moina would apparently have been a better choice for those hobbyists.

  I am on aol6.0 so cannot respond to the 
email directly.  aol6.0 is in html and the live food digest computer cannot 
read html.  so maybe please you could pass on this web site to the live food 
digest for me.  please respond through the live food digest so everyone can 
benefit from your knowledge.

Fine, I will do that. Everyone please forgive me if I bask in the undeserved glow of George's compliments. I don't make scientific observations on my daphnia and I don't keep written logs and records of what I do with them. I just raise them and feed them to my fish.

I have George's same problem. I am on msn6 and I can't respond from there because of the HTML thing. To solve it I set up a free account elsewhere ans subscribed to the LFD there as well. I can now read the digest on my msn6 account and respond on my freebie account.

And finally here is the site George promised about moina culture: 

http://www.science.nus.edu.sg/~webdbs/research/fish/livefood/moina.html 

 
thanks 
George Arndt 
Harvard, MA 




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