Live plants in daphnia culture

[KaeGji]

Has anyone ever tried to use live plants, such as water wisteria or javamoss, in a daphnia culture instead of an airline??

 

[ZombieAxolotl]

Re: Live plans in daphnia culture

Ive never used an airline with my daphina.

Inside or out they are pretty much a tub of aged water, that's it.

I don't use plants because I want algae to grow. Plants eat up the nutrients the algae needs to really take off to feed the daphnia.

In reality, plants wouldn't take it all and algae would still grow, but i don't see the point since they do just fine minus plants and the algae growth is better

 

[KaeGji]

Re: Live plans in daphnia culture

What about for an indoor setup??

Ive never used an airline with my daphina.

Inside or out they are pretty much a tub of aged water, that's it.

I don't use plants because I want algae to grow. Plants eat up the nutrients the algae needs to really take off to feed the daphnia.

In reality, plants wouldn't take it all and algae would still grow, but i don't see the point since they do just fine minus plants and the algae growth is better

 

[ZombieAxolotl]

Re: Live plans in daphnia culture

I keep both indoor and outdoor depending on the weather.

Never used any kind of filtration or air line.

I'm sure the daphnia would love live plants, I just don't keep them in with them because of the nutrient fight between them and the green water growth the daphnia feed off of.

It shouldn't cause enough to make a problem though as long as you have good UVB for growth.

 

[thadious]

Re: Live plans in daphnia culture

i have a question for you guys, i need to start a culture and i know where to order daphnia. but everything i have read it says not to use tap water or recently cycled tank water. so that put me in a dilemma. so i went down to the creek by my house and got water from a spot that sits. last year at this time by me it was 70 degrees but this year its 30 outside and no standing green water in the rain barrows yet.so my question is the creek water should be good?

 

[Kaysie]

Re: Live plans in daphnia culture

Creek water should be fine as long as you check for predators.

I use RO water that I've hardened a little with some tap water, 4:1. The best water to use for daphnia, though, is old tank water.

 

[thadious]

I recently cycle my tank so I have no old water, but the nice thing is that the creek water was ice cold and the top layer frozen yet. So hopefully there will be no predators
Sent from my GT-P3113 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Coastal Groovin]

Re: Live plans in daphnia culture

If you are going to keep Daphnia inside keep the light on 15-20 hours a day and use the dirty water from cleaning your tanks. Dechlorinated water is useless. It will just crash your cultures. An air stone will cause a current that will toss them around killing them. I feed mine powdered fish flakes or green water. Keep 2 or more cultures going. One is sure to crash for no reason You will never figure out why. If one does crash do not dump it out. Pour off all the water except for the debris and dirt on the bottom. Let it dry out in the sun for a week or two and refill with old water again. Keep you water room temp. Low temps slow growth. There is a very good chance it will restart itself. To sum it up what you need for success......

1. old dirty water
2. no air stone
3. feed green water and powdered fish flakes.
4. Long Photo period.
5. At least room temp
6. Have 2 or more cultures going.

 

[KaeGji]

Re: Live plans in daphnia culture

ok, cool...sounds simple enough lol

 

[Coastal Groovin]

Re: Live plans in daphnia culture

Sometimes the simple things are the hardest. Especially with Daphnia cultures....lol.

 

[Fishfur]

Re: Live plans in daphnia culture

Might want to consider Moina instead. They are much hardier, have a much wider temperature tolerance, do not have the boom/bust population cycles most daphnia have and are happy at much higher culture densities than daphnia are.

If you coculture with Dero worms, they do even better, both species seem to compliment each other. I have a lot of info on culturing these guys I've gleaned from verious places, if you're interested, let me know. I'll post the links.