Where do you get your daphnia?

I have been seeing a few posts about people feeding their axolotls daphnia. I was just wandering where every one gets them and how many they get at a time. I have studied up on brine shrimp and they are relatively easy to acquire. I just haven't found much on daphnia and what I have found for live ones seems that the numbers wouldn't last long as feeders. Any help is greatly appreciated.

I usually get mine from a trusted local fish seller who understands what I do and keep.

However, food as tiny as daphnia is only suitable for tiny axolotls! As soon as they are big enough they should be eating earthworms. You can buy hatchling earthworms which are sooooo tiny so axolotls can start on them quite young!

You can culture them yourself. They are prone to boom and bust, its hard to stabalise the population if you want to use large amounts, if you only want to raise a few larvae they are pretty easy, I have a 4ft x 2ftx 2ft and a 5ft x2ft x 2ft solely for daphnia production in my garden. I use daphnia on axolotls up to 3", they will eat it when they are bigger but the volume they would require is more than I could possibly culture

You can order live daphnia on aquabid.com or ebay. I order at least 1500 at a time. Like xxianxx said, it is easy for feeding small numbers of larvae, and nice because they don't foul the water, but it's hard to keep enough on hand to feed a large group of larvae. I used up 1500 and had to reorder another 1500 for a group of 15 before switching them over completely to bloodworms and live blackworms.

rachel1 said:

You can order live daphnia on aquabid.com or ebay. I order at least 1500 at a time. Like xxianxx said, it is easy for feeding small numbers of larvae, and nice because they don't foul the water, but it's hard to keep enough on hand to feed a large group of larvae. I used up 1500 and had to reorder another 1500 for a group of 15 before switching them over completely to bloodworms and live blackworms.

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Thanks, these numbers helped me understand what I will be looking at. I'm thinking about ordering 10 axolotl eggs and raising them from there. I understand not all eggs hatch, but I figure high side I should have 10, low side 2-3. Hopefully more towards the middle range, if I have too many I can always sell locally. A lot of the sales of daphnia I have seen were in the 100's range and I figured I could find much better deals than what they were going for. At least now I know to plan for at least 200 per axolotl before switching to newer food. I just didn't want to be looking at too few and have hungry babies. That's another reason I'm looking at 10 eggs, will be easier to rear than a larger number and be able to manage the food supply as well as keep them from trying to eat each other.

xxianxx said:

You can culture them yourself. They are prone to boom and bust, its hard to stabalise the population if you want to use large amounts, if you only want to raise a few larvae they are pretty easy, I have a 4ft x 2ftx 2ft and a 5ft x2ft x 2ft solely for daphnia production in my garden. I use daphnia on axolotls up to 3", they will eat it when they are bigger but the volume they would require is more than I could possibly culture

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Do you feel a 10 gal tank would suffice in the daphnia for me? I understand they are tiny. And I only plan on rearing 10 eggs at most, hopefully have between 4-6 babies that will later be in a 65-75 gallon tank. But as far as food production for the babies should that be ok? After they get bigger I plan on having them on worm and minnow diet with minnows as feeder fish that also live n the same tank after being quarantined of course.

Get a few buckets , several cultures are better than one tank as they can crash

xxianxx said:

Get a few buckets , several cultures are better than one tank as they can crash

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Ok, ill have to look into a few buckets, I know some places that I might be able to get them for free.Im not going to be keeping them long term, just long enough to get them to bigger foods then I won't have any need after.