How to Culture Daphnia

hi I've been culturing Daphnia both

indoors and out as an excellent live

food for my fish for many years today I

want to show you how to culture Daphnia

indoors successfully so let's look at my

deaf net culture setup and we'll start

from the top here with the lighting I'm

just using an old t5 aquarium fixture

and that is for several reasons one is

that the Daphnia are attracted to light

and so they congregate at the surface

allowing me to net out large quantities

of Daphnia easily another one is it just

makes it easier to look at the setup and

see what's going on

and finally if the light encourages any

algebra the Daphnia and other species in

here will eat that and so that's

beneficial for them as well let's look

at the aeration here as you can see it's

very simple I'm just using some rigid

and flexible airline tubing attached to

an air pump no air stone and there's a

very specific reason for that an air

stone would cause much finer bubbles to

be produced which can be damaging to the

Daphnia smaller bubbles can actually get

lodged in the carapace or the shell of

the Daphnia causing them to float to the

surface where they'll usually die if

that happens now here is how I change

the water in my Daphnia tank this is

just some PVC pipe and some elbows and

this valve I attach them with cement PVC

cement and whenever I want to I can just

flip this valve and take out a gallon or

so of water I like to change a gallon or

two of water every week the reason I

don't change with my water changing

equipment that I use with my aquariums

is to prevent the slight possibility

that Hydra from my planted aquariums or

other aquariums could infest the Daphnia

culture and eat all of my death nail and

as you've probably noticed there are

other species here in the tank with the

Daphnia I have ram's horn snails scuds

or amphipods

and I even have some smaller creatures

like seed shrimp and copepods now all of

these seems to be beneficial they

certainly don't harm the Daphne and I

think they actually help the Daphnia to

do well one reason for that is that I

can put large pieces of food such as

lettuce leaves or

Keamy slices in and the snails and the

amphipods will eat them Daphne can't

really eat things like that but the

small particles and especially the

infusoria that result from the ram's

horn snails and the amphipods and so on

eating those larger foods are a

supplemental food for the Daphne and

that's kind of a good segue into food

what do I generally feed my Daphnia in

addition to what I already mentioned

well I do put fish food pellets in this

culture as well as zucchini slices

lettuce leaves as I mentioned and other

foods like that but those are mostly for

these snails and the scuds or those

amphipods so the main food that I use

for the Daphnia is a mix of several

flowers and spirulina algae so I use

powdered spirulina algae rice flour

wheat flour and chickpea flour or

garbanzo bean flour as well as green pea

flour now the reason why I use these is

that ones are really easy I know a lot

of people use yeast and things like that

but I found that they're really easy

they're basically foolproof yeast can

sometimes kill Daphnia if it's not used

properly or if it's overfed and these

foods tend to work really well I just

mix the dry powders together put them in

a small container with some purified

water till they reach a consistency that

is just very watery and then I'll drip

between 5 to 10 milliliters of this

liquid into this aquarium every day or

so and then ask me to eat that they do

well the larger particles are consumed

by the snails in the Alpha pods and the

smaller suspended particles are consumed

by the Daphnia and it works extremely

well I also have some small pieces of

cuddle bone in here for calcium that's

partly for the snails but Daphnia and

scads also use calcium for their

exoskeletons to a smaller extent so

that's why I do that as well now

definitely of course make great food for

a wide variety of fish of a wide variety

of sizes because the Daphnia themselves

vary in size from the newly born now

applied to the larger adults and so you

can provide live food for a wide variety

of fish the Daphnia themselves are a

great conditioning food if you want

pigeon breeding and the fish of course

are very attracted to the hopping

motions of Daphnia the scuds and ram's

horn snails can also provide live food

to a wide variety of species so if

you're at all interested in setting up

the Daphnia culture I highly recommend

that you give them a try there are lots

of Daphnia strains out there some are

easier to culture than others if you

have success or fail your story that

you'd like to share please let me know

in the comments my channel aquarium axe

is all about aquarium and Bavarian pets

and the live foods that we culture to

feed them if you'd like to see more

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