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Re: Live Foods Digest V3 #137



Hi Dave,

If you're using animal waste, don't bother trying to culture algae.
Instead, if you add small quantities of animal waste to well aerated water,
you'll get an explosion in bacteria numbers in a few days, and these are
ideal food for Daphnia. The problem is making sure you don't make the water
anaerobic by adding too much of this hog waste to the water too quickly,
resulting in too large a population of bacteria. Very few if any large
scale commercial Daphnia growers use algae because it's easier to use
bacteria, although some people argue that bacteria are not as nutritious as
algae.

In this case, nitrate isn't specifically a crucial matter, rather overall
water quality itself is the problem. As for how long you could maintain
growth rates, I have no idea on a huge scale. But forget about just
culturing algae via animal waste.

-John

At 03:58 15/02/01 -0500, you wrote:
>Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 16:26:34 -0800
>From: Dave Gomberg <gomberg at wcf_com>
>Subject: Re: Live Foods Digest V3 #135
>
>I have a question.   Suppose you had 10,000,000 pounds of hog waste that 
>you wished to convert to daphnia, via algae most likely.   How would you do 
>it?   What is the ideal NO3 level for algae growth?   What about residual 
>NO3 and daphnia health?   How long could you maintain exponential growth at 
>a high rate.   Assume that this is BIG operation with wells and pumps and 
>acres of ponds.....