Culturing wild Daphnia species

have people tried to cultivate Daphnia collected locally? I find a species in Alaska ponds that is between pulex and magna in size - it may be smallish magna or a different species. I want to try to culture them. Does anyone know which species exist in the wild in North America and whether they should be cultured like pulex or magna?They appear in phenomenal densities in the summer up here.

...they might be D. middendorffiana - anyone have experiences with these?

okay, I'm in Anchorage and I just took my doggie for a walk on a lake where there so many Daphnia like I've never seen in my life - the water was orange with Daphnia and when I put my cupped hand in I got hundreds and hundreds in each handful.

I'm dizzy!

I'm gonna put some of them into bottles tomorrow morning and put them in my checked bag on the flight home. I wanna see if I can culture this lot!

Try it and let us know! I expect that if you replicate their natural temperature range and feed in the usual manner, they should do OK.

The daphnia I began with years ago were wild-collected in California - they are the same size as D. pulex, but I have no idea if they are or not.

I too am trying my hand a culturing a local daphnia species. with all the flooding going on here, I have been able to collect five gallon buckets full of daphnia on a daily basis. The issue I have so far is that these guys have an extremely fast life cycle! (In my case they reproduce en masse roughly every 11 days!)

Take lots of pictures of their environment and Wolfram Alpha (that's a wicked search engine for hard fact and statistics) the weather cycles there.

I know from experience that some species require a desiccation cycle. I once found daphnia in a two meter long concrete trough at an abandon mine near Death Valley. I didn't even try to collect or culture those as I knew there was no way I could simulate the conditions there.

My local species are about pulex sized, but the sheer numbers of them and the fast cycle make them really useful for my pets.

I do not know if this trick will work for yours, but I found the usual foods provided for a culture (yeast, powdered spirulina, green water) do not work for me on this species. I took to culturing microorganisms in a kiddie pool filled with rain water and pet shop alfalfa hay (for pet rodents). I found the food culture for the daphnia does best in a spot that gets full sun all day with a water temperature between 82-95 degrees Fahrenheit. I throw in a handful of lawn mower clippings every week or so too.

Some local water bodies have been teeming with copepods, plus some aphipods and anostracans, and I have scooped many and transferred them to plastic totes in the back [west] yard. I top the totes with rain water and the copepods are thriving in all.

Like so many other things, copepods have a lot of convergence, and many populations identified as [for example] Daphnia pulex, may not even be related to animals owning the name. Thus, animals of the same name found far apart from one another may NOT require the same conditions. Try 'em out though - if I were still living in the north, raising newts would have been easy. I would have been able to feed abundant live prey daily and still have much to freeze for use in the winter.

thanks all. I noticed that after a recent cold spell in NW Alaska the water temp in my collection pool dropped to ca. 45 F (down from 60F), and the Daphnia I fished out during that time were making ephippia. They must over-winter as ephippia here as all water is frozen from Oct to May.

Maybe they are programmed to go bust after a few generations.

Also, if they are D. middendorffia their carapace is supposed to be 3x thicker than that of D. pulex, which might make them less nutritious and harder to digest....

well, I'll try

SludgeMunkey said:

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I found the food culture for the daphnia does best in a spot that gets full sun all day with a water temperature between 82-95 degrees Fahrenheit. I throw in a handful of lawn mower clippings every week or so too.

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well, I put some Daphnia tubs on my back porch where it gets the warm afternoon and night sun, but the warmest it gets is about 62 F - more typically around 50. Better temp to keep blackworms than Daphnia. In fact, I keep about 1/2 a pound of blackworms in a large shallow tub on the porch, and they look very happy there

I have tried some Native species from Minnesota. They are slightly bigger than Daphnia Magna when full grown but had the whole "need to desiccate", problem. (I would like to call them Daphnia Godzillis:wacko: JK). I solved this problem by keeping 2 to 3 separate populations. When I started a new culture I would seed it from all 3 separate populations and it fixed the sudden die off problem. My theory is that something is triggered genetically when you get to the 5th or 6th generation. You get a die off no matter the water quality. By mixing slightly different genetic families you jumble up the genetics (they breed asexually when water quality sucks and sexually when water quality is good). So as long as they are sexual you should not have any sudden die offs.

Thought you might find this website interesting

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BioNut said:

Thought you might find this website interesting

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thanks, that's a nice webpage. I like this statement from their Daphnia page:

"Scientists are often unable to identify accurately the species under study because of poor literature, a shortage of living experts, frequent hybridization, and extreme variation in body shapes. "

To be a Daphnia expert must be great fun - think of all the cool ponds around the world you get to wade around in. Then again, there might be hazards (killer leeches? Hungry attack newts?), which may be the reason for that shortage of "living" experts...:bowl:

I have been fascinated by daphnia since the sixth grade science fair (yes, I won, and killed a ton of daphnia in the process!) I WISH I could be a daphnia expert, even if the life expectancy is shorter than my old job in the Navy.

I too use the multiple culture method. In a bit of testing (Me experiment? No way!) I found that the specimens I sampled locally fail pretty fast down in the critter room, but thrive out in the kiddie pool in the yard. I had to window screen over the pool to keep undesirables out. This worked really well until my trio of untrained attack pugs decided it was time to go for a swim.


One thing I will add in here for you, I made a "super syringe" out of two pieces of PVC pipe, some o-rings, and some epoxy putty. It holds just over a liter of water per draw and is excellent for both collecting and harvesting.

If you are interested, I'll post a thread on how to make them. It cost me 4 dollars and about 15 minutes to make it. It is also useful for squirting the pugs to keep them away from the daphnia cultures.

Hi guys
I know your daphnia are from north america but i have cultured wild caught ones with "varied success" haha. I find the wild sorts( I dont have a clue what they are) breed in huge numbers in shallow warm ponds/ditches ect during sping and summer. I usually catch a few bucket fulls and place them in black plastic mussel bouys cut in half. these hold maybe 100litres(ish) and are about 20cm deep and the max. I find the black plastic gets really warm(25+ degrees) and this seems to make the numbers explode.I used to just rely on the sun making green water for food but after reading a older post on here about grass clippings I started adding these. they make a huge difference very good info and highly recomended. Where I live these cultures sometimes last right through winter if it isnt too cold but they slow down the breeding alot. I try to have 4 of these tubs going at once so if one fails I just refill from the others. I find these to work realy well and have pretty much no maintenance except chasing the pet ducks out.
I have tried to culture these inside but they never last long.
Some one should try a similar set up with your guys wild species. plastic tubs are soo cheap these days. would be interesting to see wether black vs clear tubs would make a difference?
I would quite like to see your "super syringe" haha could be very useful