Daphnia - how to breed ??

K

karen

Guest
Hi guys

My babies which were kindly given to me by a member on the board are so tiny that I am worried they won't be able to eat even the smallest daphnia I can get hold of... they have hatched and still have a little yolk left and I have put lots of daphnia in but at the monet they just run away from it !

Can someone tell me how to breed them ?

Thanks :)
 
Hi Karen I also have some eggs from the same member but they were a batch before yours. They are now 3 weeks old and eating brineshrimp. I bought a brineshrimp hatcher kit made by ntlabs and hatch a batch everyday it is really easy. I put the hatcher into a small heated tank with slight aeration into the hatcher and they hatch in 24 hrs the axies love them. The brineshrimp are so tiny the babies have no problems eating them.
 
Hi D Jay

Cool ! Brothers and sister then eh !

I also bought the ntlabs hathcer but the water trickes out the bottom where the airstone plugs in !

Am I just not using a strong enough pump ? I have tried 2 pumps and neither seems to work !!

I need to get something sorted fast in case the daphnia are too big ...
 
I am attaching the airpump to the bottom as the diagram says and the air flows up through the water, but the water graduially trickles away !!!
 
Hi Karen I have the bottom of the hatcher attached to the airpipe then attached to my pump, it just blows gentle bubbles up the hatcher.The pump is only a small one (I believe it is the smallest you can get it just says airtype 100 on the bottom.) Have you tried a different size airpipe (if there is one!) or perhaps sealing the airpipe to the hatcher with a sealant if that would work?
 
Hi D Jay

Yes thats what I did - I have tried 2 different sizes of tubing and 2 different pumps ! Tonight I resorted to supergluing the tube in - lol. I will have a look see if I can see that pump you are using - did you use the tubing that came with the hatcher ?

I will see if my supergluing worked when I get back home :)
 
Hi Karen yes I used the tubing that came with the hatcher. Hopefully the supergluing worked if not try an aquarium sealant maybe? good luck! let us know how you get on
 
Hi DJ

No luck with the supergluing - it just fell apart ! However I sat and watched them last night again and found them eating the smallest of the daphnia (yeay !).

Problem is the daphnia dies after a few days. Anyway I set the hatcher up again with yet another piece of tubing - and it's leaking just a tiny bit so i think it might be ok.

Problem now is I don't really know what I'm looking for - how do I know when they are ready ?? It's bubbling so fast I can't really see whats going on inside ! I don't want to empty it without them being ready and have to start all over again but the water is moving around so I can't see if anything is moving (or even know what it should look like lol)

How do you get yours out ? I have the ones that say there are no shells or something - I read about having to separate the shells - so I guess I won't have to do that ? I went for a brine shrimp net today but can't find one anywhere - so am guessing nylon will do ? Do you just take off the tubing and seive them out through the bottom ? Should they be easy to see ? How long do they live once they are in fresh as opposed to salt water ?

I'm also debating about how often to clean them out and the least stressful way to do it ... my ex almost never cleaned his out and they were all fine !

At the minute I change most of them water daily - but I can't seem to do it without freaking them out ! lol

The brinshimp also makes me laugh - I'm trying to manually filter out the big stuff - as they spend half their time running away from it - which I imagine must be quite stressful !

Has it been hot in Essex ? I'm also worried about the temperature ! lol.

I feel like a worried first time mother - ha ha !!!!
 
What axies do you have ? and what colour are the babies ? :)
 
I need to get internet at home ! - I keep having to drive from one town to another to see what you have written ha ha ! :)
 
Also D Jay - if I am slow to take the brine shimp out will the movement in the water kill them ? Is it better to wait if unsure ?

Thanks for all your help !! :)
 
By the way folks... there is an entire section of the forum devoted to LIVE FOODS:
http://www.caudata.org/forum/messages/24861/24861.html?1152221040

Also, Karen, it is possible for you to EDIT your own posts for the first couple of hours after you post - no need to use a separate post for every afterthought
wink.gif


Good luck with the brine shrimp.
 
Hi Karen can you turn your pump down so you get a gentler aeration? I use a syringe (the ones you use to administer medicine to babies) attached to a piece of airpipe that reaches into the hatcher to get them out. If you take a syringe full out and hold it up to the light you will see the brineshrimp swimming around. I then put them into a coffee filter rinse them under a little cold water then gently swoosh the filter around the axies tank. When I know they have hatched I place whats left into a separate tub with an airstone in it so the hatcher is ready for the next batch of eggs. I can now hatch a batch every 24 hours it took a while but I got there in the end!!! Once the brineshrimp are in fresh water they die within a couple of hours (if they manage to avoid the axies that long)As for cleaning the water I change half of it every 2 days I dont like to stress the babies out too much I use the syringe to get out most of the muck. It has been very hot in essex the hottest was 33c!! my babies are looking like they will be leucistic hard to tell at the moment as they are only 2cms. I also have 1 adult leucistic, 3 wildtypes and 2 golds.
 
Hi Djay

Thanks for all the info ! No neither of the pumps I have seem to be able to be turned down ..

My fist batch I could only see a few of them moving. I wasn't sure if I had stopped it too early or too late.

The instructions that came with the hatcher said the eggs needed to be kept suspended so the flow needs to be quite high I thought, but at the same time once hatched I don't know if it kills them ?

This batch I have left longer but occassionally stop the pump to see how many are moving !

At the moment the axies are eating the smallest of the daphnia until I can get some brineshrimp for them lol.

How are you keeping them cool ?

Cheers again !

Karen
 
PS the ones I have are artemia revolution brine shrimp eggs without shells - does this mean I don't have to separate anything - I juts have to filter them out of the ater solution and rinse them off .... ?
 
I can't tell what mine are - although they look more yellowy than the leucistics did when they hatched ..
 
Hi Karen I don't think the water flow will kill them it hasn't mine. I have the same shrimp eggs as you and I just take them out and rinse them before giving them to the babies. As for keeping them cool I have started to replace some of the water with cold water and they are doing well. They have their front legs!!!I didn't notice them but hubby did I thought they were the gills as they are almost hidden underneath them!! I got them some daphnia yesterday and they run away from them as well!!
 
Ah bless !

I tried the coffee filter thing today but it seemed like it would have just dissolved if i tried to rinse them with water - in fact that wasn't the hardest part - rinsing something i couldn't even see was the hardest part !!

I'm thinking I might give daphnia a go - at least you don't have thre saltwater / freshwater / problem ! Have you tried them ?

I think I read they eat yeast or something ..

I'm gonna get some from the pet shop tomorrow and maybe do a bit of reading on daphnia breeding lol !!
 
I was thinking about how the air pump was too high in relation to the air flow, the peshops/fish shops here sell little clamp things that you can put over the air line to control the amount of air flow through the tubing. On the other hand I have also seen a 'tap' type thing that you put in the air line. You have to cut the air line in 2 and join them back together with the tap and then you can turn the tap on high or low depending on what you want. The clamp would be easier to make yourself, you could just lightly bend the air line until the desired air flow and hold it in place with something?? Just an idea.
 
Hi Karen I have tried daphnia they will eat the smaller ones but run away from the larger ones!!
I haven't heard of the yeast thing so good luck with that let us know how you get on.
 
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