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Re: Live Foods Digest V2 #266
Hi Mary,
You don't mention the species of Daphnia you have, but a few general
points on Daphnia should hold well for any species. A new culture usually
takes a few days to settle down if the Daphnia you start off with
haven't fed well before being put into the tank. Within a week they start
to produce young daphnia and tend to go reproduce in a cycle of 2-3 days,
producing around 10 live young (although this number varies greatly with
the age/size of the parent and the species). This seems rather analogous
to the lag phase in bacterial growth (I've actually seen a book that
studies energy usage in crustacea, and they have done some lovely studies
of Daphnia pulex and magna, among others).
All of the above really depends on you keeping the daphnia under good
conditions of temperature (about 22 degree Celcius seems to work
reasonably well for all species, but it's just a general guide), food
- free living algae, like volvox, or other green water organisms like
Euglena are found in the "pea soup" green water found in some stagnant
ponds is ideal food. You can grow this yourself in gallon jars or even an
old aquarium (doesn't have to be big) using organic waste (I find anything
meat related, preferably cooked) is great fertiliser, but only use very
small quantities to prevent disease and bacterial infection; and probably
most important of all are the water conditions - slightly to mildly
alkaline water with a reasonably mild hardness seems to be ideal for most
species. Also make sure you change it on a weekly to bi-weekly basis when
the culture is at its highest density in order to prevent fouling.
Following the above you should have a lot of success and some very happy
fish.
John
On Mon, 23 Nov 1998, Live Foods Digest wrote:
> - -------- Original Message --------
> Non-member submission from [Mary Jane Te <mjte at dvo_skyinet.net>]
> Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 16:07:30 -0800
> From: Mary Jane Te <mjte at dvo_skyinet.net>
>
> Hi! I'm from the Philippines and I'm trying to start my own daphnia
> culture. I'm using an old ten gallon aquarium with my culture. I half
> filled the tank with water from my angelfish tank. I also put some
> rotten lettuce before putting the daphnia. The tank is aerated. It's
> been two days now since I've put my culture but it seems that they are
> not multiplying in number. Hope that you could help with this. Hope to
> hear from you as soon as you can. Thanks!
---
"Language has not the power to speak what love indites:
The soul lies buried in the ink that writes."
eirinn at valhalla_com (http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~jpc)