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Re: Live Foods Digest V2 #460
>you guys and gals seem to harvest the mosqito larvae at the egg size but i
>cant seem to be able to find and floating ...
Look for the egg rafts bobbing on the surface. They look like someone
scratched a piece of charcoal with a fingernail. Each raft may have 100 or
more eggs which will hatch in a day or so. I have a small batch of A.
bivitattum Funge I am starting of with eggs rafts judiciously added to their
battery jar.
>big suckers before i het a stocking put it over another bucket and pour the
>water through it to reveal large bits of dirt and stuff as well as these
>mosqito larvae is there a better wayu to harvest is it better to collecet
>em all up at the real small size?
The stock ing a neat idea. Dump all of the flopsome and jetsome in a very
deep jar. The debris will mostly sink to the bottom or be easily plucked
out. A baster will remove the larvae - it is best to get the pupae (the ones
who look like commas on prozac) out first in that they will develop into the
winged pest in a matter of minutes to a few hours.
Many years ago Tetra made a sift set with four sizes of plastic mesh. Each
one fit into the others. the smallest mesh even strained out the almost all
of the smallest mosquito larvae out. That was useful because they are
softbodies and a lot smaller than baby brine shrimp nauplii.
It was easy to put the stack into a large mouthed gallon pickle jar. The top
of those jars, commonly available in the Chicago area, is about 10 mm or 4
inches. Stores that sell food in bulk have the most. Go for the glass ones -
as opposed to plastic.
I wish the Tetra Sifts were still in production. A couple of AKA members
have taken PVC pipe and fitted them with meshes. A solvent applied to the
end of the pipe (outdoors please!) loosened things up enough to allow a
close bond with the mesh. George Fryk, a CKA friend, found that using
adapters (where one could connect a 4" pipe to a three inch pipe) were
especially handy because the mesh could be placed in the small end of the
adapter and the set would fit one into another. If the operation doesn't fit
a jar smoothly, place them in a clean plastic funnel. (You should have a
dedicated funnel in the 20 mm range for the fishroom anyway.)
The hardest part of the project is finding the set of meshes at a hardware
or craft store. I would welcome information on sources.
>my other question is about daphina im thinking about culturing something
>besides mosqito larvae and thought of daphina asd youve been talking about
>it for the last few days any way how can i go about obtaining it here in
>australia its in pretty much all water isnt it is it so tiny that i can not
>caytch it with a stocking? as you can see i dont know a lot about the
>animalks so any help would be greatly appreciated!
The archives from this list will give you quite a bit of info. The AKA site
www.aka.org and England's Viviparous site are very useful too. I'm sorry I
don't have their URL handy....
Since you are from Oz, it would be much easier (and legal) to get daphnia
from someone there. Do a search for ANGFA (maybe it is www.ozemail.com.au )
or the Rainbow Mailing List - there is a link from the ANGFA site. Their
archives and the mailing list should suggest contacts. The ANGFA group has
local chapters. If they are at all like American aquarium clubs, at least
someone in each will probably have starters.
Good Luck!
Scott