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Re: Live Foods Digest V4 #13



Hi, Adrian!

To respond:

  << I understand that you culture your daphnia in 35 gallon tubs using soy 
flour 
and yeast (from your previous posts).  Do you mind telling me what is the 
brand of soy flour you use?  I can't seem to find it in Tesco(a supermarket 
in UK) here.>>

    I use Hodgson brand which is packaged in Illinois.  I'm sure that there 
are others.    You might try a "health food" store if you can't find it in a 
regular food market.  One pound will last me several years, at least.
 
<< How much of drained daphnia do you manage to harvest from one 35 gallon 
tubs 
 per day? I'm trying to calculate how much I should expect from my culture 
 unit per day. I have a couple of bettas and I'm wondering wheather my
 culture unit can feed them on a day to day basis.>>

     The yield will vary with the amount of food supplied and the lighting, 
among other things.  I feed modestly once a day, and light with a 40 watt 
incandescent bulb for about 12 hours.  I get about 1/2 teaspoon of drained 
daphnia per tub.   If I provided more inputs I'd get more daphnia, but two 
tubs give me all that I need.  Plus more inputs = more mess =  more cleaning. 
 I get about 4 months out of a tug before I have to tear it down and start 
anew.

Daniel warns of some of the dangers of feeding yeast.  It's important not to 
overfeed, particularly when a culture is getting started.  Yeast is alive and 
reproduces, and too much can crowd out the daphnia.  If you use the soy flour 
food, note that you mix only 2 tsp of yeast with 1 cup of flour, and then use 
only 1/4 tsp of that mixture in a cup of water for a tub.  You can increase 
that if the water clears too soon.

Most people say that daphnia need hard, alkaline water.

By the way, it's probably not the best thing to feed only daphnia to your 
bettas.  Supplementing that with a good flake food would be a good thing.   
Or, since bettas like to feed on the surface, perhaps wingless fruit flies 
might be useful.  These are available from several on-line sources, and are 
easy to culture.
 
Good luck!

Bill