Where can I find daphnia???

[jeff]

I must know! I am in washington state and so far no luck. I am about to get my chest waders on and start "harvesting" the pond near my house, but im not sure how to "catch" them and not every other aqautic organism that will eat them too. Help!

 

[jennifer]

If you have a good pond, start there. Use a brine shrimp net (fine white material, sold in nearly every pet shop). Dip quickly and see what you get. Don't use the waders, you'll just scare all the critters away; try to dip from the edge without disturbing the water first.

Chance are you'll get something you can culture under daphnia conditions. You're unlikely to get something that will eat the daphnia or larvae; it would be bigger and probably obvious. If the pond is a good source of daphnia or other micro-organisms, you could just harvest from there, it's probably easier than culturing. If you're worried, just feed the pond critters to a few of your offspring and see how it goes.

If that fails:
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[mark]

One method I’ve been using, with great success, is to get a sieve with holes big enough to let daphnia and micro bugs through but will stop larger inverts like adult shrimps, water lice and nymphs. Pour pond water through the sieve into another container and then pour the contents of that container into the brine shrimp net. Hey presto – a net full of tiny water invertebrates. Obviously the more water you process in this method the more inverts you’ll end up with. The only annoyance is that sometimes very small leeches get through but they can easily be plucked out with tweezers.

Another annoyance is hydra, which are prolific in my daphnia tubs – unfortunately they like to eat daphnia, which is annoying if you only have a few to start your culture. I tend to have hydra squashing sessions when the mood takes me….