Feeding Question??

[Janine]

I have a very good culture of Daphnia going and some egss ready to hatch within a week or so. Housed in a plastic show box for the moment. But whats the best way to apply the daphnia to the babies? I went to a pet shop in london and saw they had polystyrene boxes with their larvae and they were pouring live daphnia into them. They seemed to be having great success. Would putting daphnia into my plastic container like this be okay? Would I need to turn off my bio-filter. Would I need a high concentration and also if I put too much in would the daphnia die and dirty the water quality? Whats the best way to go about this?
Thanks.

[nai live]

How many eggs do you have? You need to make sure you have enough live food, relying purely on daphnia is hazardous they have a bad habit of crashing at the worst time possible time, if you only have one culture split it to spread the risk. Also invest in some brine shrimp eggs as a back up, if you dont use them with this batch of eggs they will keep for years. There are two main ways of utilizing daphnia, the first is to just keep dumping them into a tank and doing regular water changes, turn off your filter otherwise you will be filtering the daphnia out. The second technique is a pond tank set up , heavily planted with a good growth of algae in the water, occasional small water changes, add daphnia to the tank, they will stay alive and breed, you can keep topping the numbers up if they are getting consumed too fast. I use both techniques, the second is less labour intensive but I only use it with small numbers of larvae, maybe 10-20 in a two foot tank , the first method is good for hundreds if the tank is large enough. However if you want to be really lazy drop them all in your daphnia tub if it is suitable, just keep an eye on the daphnia population as the axolotls will effect the water chemistry and may crash it .

[Janine]

I have about 30 eggs and have only used brineshrimp in the past, and I still have plenty brineshrimp eggs left but wanted to try daphnia as they last longer in the water and such. I have already split the culture into two, the first and largest is in a waterbutt outside, and they've really boomed. I often feed these to my guppies. The second is in a small plastic tank on a windowsill but this has very green water and bits of lettuce and pellets for daphnia food, I don't know if id like to use this for the larvae. The biofilter is off. How much of a water change and how often would I need to do this if I kept putting daphnia in? And would the occasional glass of green water into the tank help keep the daphnia alive? I dont mind if its labor intensive or not, I just want the best possible way of keeping my larvae well fed and alive.

Thanks for your reply :)

[nai live]

I would prefer to exclusively use daphnia than baby brine shrimp (bbs) as it is less work, also more water changes are potentially stress full to larvae. With bbs I would feed twice daily and clean the water before every feed, you can get away with one feed and clean. When you use daphnia they stay alive for longer but be aware that newly hatched larvae will not be able to use the adults as they are too large, you need to feed baby daphnia. How often you do water changes will be dependent on water volume , stocking density, amount of available food and wether your tank is full of plants. You need to change the water as often as is required lol. For an example, a 2ft bare tank with forty newly hatched may require a 20% change every couple of days, plus slurping the muck off the bottom, as they get bigger split the batch to other tanks to reduce the bio load. I generally use a bare tank with an air stone , a few pieces of elodea and duck weed. This provides some cover, shade to keep the tank a bit cooler and the plants will remove some of the ammonia(not much but every little helps). As they get bigger I tend to move them to cycled tanks with a sand substrate , planted and hides, you are less likely to kill them by moving stuff about or syphoning them up when they are bigger. It is all a matter of experience, which unfortunately you have to learn the hard way, despite any information you can glean off the forums, just do your best and keep those shrimp eggs handy , daphnia can be a pain in the butt for crashing.

[Janine]

The tank is just over a foot long, bare bottom, it has two bunches of elodea and an air stone with a limiter so its of a nice slow pace. The eggs are also in a breeding net, a square net just so that when they do hatch I can see them. I'll keep a close eye on my daphnia as suggested and if they seem to be decreasing in numbers I'll get the bbs hatchery going. I get quite a bit of small daphnia. At the moment I have one early baby that looks like its doing well in a plastic tub with daphnia, I think I'll put him in the tank with the others when they hatch and once I'm certain he's eating. A 20% water change sounds good thanks, I'll remember that and do it when needed/and ever couple of days.

You've been really helpful and reassuring. Many thanks