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Retirement and forum shutdown (17 Jan 2022)
Hi,
John Howell who has managed the forum for years is getting on and wishes to retire from the role of managing it.
Over the years, he has managed the forum through good days and bad days and he has always been fair.
He has managed to bring his passion for fish keeping to the forum and keep it going for so long.
I wish to thank John for his hard work in keeping the forum going.
With John wishing to "retire" from the role of managing the forum and the forum receiving very little traffic, I think we must agree that forum has come to a natural conclusion and it's time to put it to rest.
I am proposing that the forum be made read-only from March 2022 onwards and that no new users or content be created. The website is still registered for several more years, so the content will still be accessible but no new topics or replies will be allowed.
If there is interest from the ITFS or other fish keeping clubs, we may redirect traffic to them or to a Facebook group but will not actively manage it.
I'd like to thank everyone over the years who helped with forum, posted a reply, started a new topic, ask a question and helped a newbie in fish keeping. And thank you to the sponsors who helped us along the away. Hopefully it made the hobby stronger.
I'd especially like to thank John Howell and Valerie Rousseau for all of their contributions, without them the forum would have never been has successful.
Thank you
Darragh Sherwin
Say "Hello" to Daphnia
19 May 2010 17:28 #1
by Puddlefish (Colin McCourt)
Say "Hello" to Daphnia was created by Puddlefish (Colin McCourt)
I have never actually considered Daphnia Aquaculture in any great detail before. Yes, I've managed to keep the little things going from time to time, outside in a cut-up fashioned tub which I initially set up to attract midge and to harvest their larvae.
After reading quite a bit of literature on the subject, I'm now tentatively embarking on learning how to culture this form of live food properly.
In Northern Ireland we are poorly served by our local aquarist establishments of which we have only three we can use who can actually call themselves true aquarist establishments. None of them stock livefoods, no adult brineshrimp, no tubifex and for the purpose of this article no daphnia. We have to resort to searching out our own breeding grounds or send for supplies to the mainland of which the postal rates negate the last option.
I've been wanting to add to my ever growing livefood culture list for while now and have chosen Daphnia pulex over Daphnia magna due to it's smaller size.
I sent for a clean, disease free starter culture from a guy called Dave who lives in North Down. he quite happily supplied me with a few cultures along with food (concentrate green algae solution) also included was an algae starter solution which should let me brew my own food for the daphnia if I follow the concise instruction leaflet enclosed.
Contents of the D. pulex starter kit
The final home for the D. pulex in the summer months is expected to be a large drum filled with rainwater and pH adjusted like the one below.
Large drum intended to be the eventual Summer breeding ground for the Daphnia
Given that it's much too cold outside at the moment I have been advised to culture indoors until the weather is more clement. Following the instructions provided with the kit, I will be using a 3ltr Ice Cream carton.
Initial culture vessel, a 3ltr Ice Cream carton. The first thing I needed to do was to adjust the rainwater pH up to 7.2 as advised
Floating the bags of D. pulex was next on the agenda to equalize the temperatures between the bags and the tub, after which the daphnia was carefully poured into some small containers so I could slowly acclimatise and mix some of the water I'd made up with their own culture water.
After around half an hour I reckoned the acclimatisation was complete and the time had come to add the Daphnia to their new provisional home. The instructions concluded that the creatures should be fed immediately. I added enough of the concentrated algae to slightly tinge the water green. Once this has cleared a little I will add further amounts of the algae.
I now need to set up the algae cultures (green water) in 2 litre bottles. I will try to incorporate two culture vessels in my Livefood cupboard as both light and air are already installed this would make things much more convenient.
Work in Progress
ATB
C
After reading quite a bit of literature on the subject, I'm now tentatively embarking on learning how to culture this form of live food properly.
In Northern Ireland we are poorly served by our local aquarist establishments of which we have only three we can use who can actually call themselves true aquarist establishments. None of them stock livefoods, no adult brineshrimp, no tubifex and for the purpose of this article no daphnia. We have to resort to searching out our own breeding grounds or send for supplies to the mainland of which the postal rates negate the last option.
I've been wanting to add to my ever growing livefood culture list for while now and have chosen Daphnia pulex over Daphnia magna due to it's smaller size.
I sent for a clean, disease free starter culture from a guy called Dave who lives in North Down. he quite happily supplied me with a few cultures along with food (concentrate green algae solution) also included was an algae starter solution which should let me brew my own food for the daphnia if I follow the concise instruction leaflet enclosed.
Contents of the D. pulex starter kit
The final home for the D. pulex in the summer months is expected to be a large drum filled with rainwater and pH adjusted like the one below.
Large drum intended to be the eventual Summer breeding ground for the Daphnia
Given that it's much too cold outside at the moment I have been advised to culture indoors until the weather is more clement. Following the instructions provided with the kit, I will be using a 3ltr Ice Cream carton.
Initial culture vessel, a 3ltr Ice Cream carton. The first thing I needed to do was to adjust the rainwater pH up to 7.2 as advised
Floating the bags of D. pulex was next on the agenda to equalize the temperatures between the bags and the tub, after which the daphnia was carefully poured into some small containers so I could slowly acclimatise and mix some of the water I'd made up with their own culture water.
After around half an hour I reckoned the acclimatisation was complete and the time had come to add the Daphnia to their new provisional home. The instructions concluded that the creatures should be fed immediately. I added enough of the concentrated algae to slightly tinge the water green. Once this has cleared a little I will add further amounts of the algae.
I now need to set up the algae cultures (green water) in 2 litre bottles. I will try to incorporate two culture vessels in my Livefood cupboard as both light and air are already installed this would make things much more convenient.
Work in Progress
ATB
C
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21 May 2010 20:20 - 21 May 2010 20:34 #13
by Puddlefish (Colin McCourt)
Replied by Puddlefish (Colin McCourt) on topic Re:Say "Hello" to Daphnia
I too get my flubendazole supplies from the States. Hydra be gone!
Anyway getting back to the subject in hand Daphnia.
The images below shows my live food cupboard. (500mm wall cupboard B&Q's finest) Home of gazillions of minute and microscopic critters.
After making up 2 glass spaghetti jars with the initial starter culture and the food. The liquid went through various degrees of shades of green eventually ending up with the nice dark green elixir on which I feed the Daphnia. The whole process takes about 7-10 days from being an almost clear solution to what you can see in the image below.
I just use tapwater to culture the algae as in my area it is very hard with a high TDS. I tried boiling rainwater and adding chemicals to bring the water up to the proper stats but the algae would reach a light translucent green and go no further, never attaining the dark concentrate that I crave. You also need to vigorously aerate the liquid to keep the algae in suspension. A word too on the culture jar itself, I have been using plastic 2 litre bottles but again the culture failed to reach it's full potential so I would recommend glass if you are going to attempt this for yourself.
The following image shows two forms of Green Water, the bottle on the left is algae cultured outside whilst the bottle on the right is home artificially cultured algae.
I'm sure you'll all agree which is the most wholesome on which to feed Daphnia.
Next up I will write a little regarding the actual food I use for maintaining the cultures.
Regards
C
Anyway getting back to the subject in hand Daphnia.
The images below shows my live food cupboard. (500mm wall cupboard B&Q's finest) Home of gazillions of minute and microscopic critters.
After making up 2 glass spaghetti jars with the initial starter culture and the food. The liquid went through various degrees of shades of green eventually ending up with the nice dark green elixir on which I feed the Daphnia. The whole process takes about 7-10 days from being an almost clear solution to what you can see in the image below.
I just use tapwater to culture the algae as in my area it is very hard with a high TDS. I tried boiling rainwater and adding chemicals to bring the water up to the proper stats but the algae would reach a light translucent green and go no further, never attaining the dark concentrate that I crave. You also need to vigorously aerate the liquid to keep the algae in suspension. A word too on the culture jar itself, I have been using plastic 2 litre bottles but again the culture failed to reach it's full potential so I would recommend glass if you are going to attempt this for yourself.
The following image shows two forms of Green Water, the bottle on the left is algae cultured outside whilst the bottle on the right is home artificially cultured algae.
I'm sure you'll all agree which is the most wholesome on which to feed Daphnia.
Next up I will write a little regarding the actual food I use for maintaining the cultures.
Regards
C
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22 May 2010 15:14 #17
by Puddlefish (Colin McCourt)
Replied by Puddlefish (Colin McCourt) on topic Re:Say
I've a bit of catching up to rival you guy's post count 
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23 May 2010 06:48 - 23 May 2010 08:31 #18
by Puddlefish (Colin McCourt)
Replied by Puddlefish (Colin McCourt) on topic Re:Say
Although Dave at Daphnia Direct advocates you to purchase ordinary house-plant fertilizer after you have used what's in the kit, to feed your now established algae culture I must tell you that for me this didn't work. I tried everything even limiting myself to purchasing the plant food only with the same blue colour as Dave's magical mixture. I tried many, many bottles ranging from Miracle Grow Pour & Feed Plant Food to drip feeders for Orchids. I paraded up and down isles of ferts at B&Q and garden centres and purchasing many bottles of these products in a vane effort to get my algae cultures to maximize their full potential.
I was quickly getting to the point of almost giving up hope and just resigning myself to the fact that a light green soup is the best I was going to achieve. Then I stumbled upon this little potion. Essentially a Phytoplankton fertilizer
Guillard’s f/2 formulation.
This seems to be the catalyst as far as I'm concerned in regards to assist production of the correct artificially cultured food for Daphnia. (external ponds aside). The fact that its a dedicated food for Phytoplankton suggests that there are no heavy metals present in the formulation. These unwanted commodities being one of the factors that would eventually kill the Daphnia culture. So that was a tick in the right box on that score.
I am feeding the Daphnia with 200mls of the algae every other day (the tub water going from green to almost clear in that time frame as the daphnia consume the algae) The daphnia culture going from being just sustainable it has now starting to flourish with the juveniles growing on and maturing and smaller ones appearing all the time, this surely must an indication that all is pretty much as it should be. The problem, now, for me is, I don't really know what the saturation rate should be for a particular size of tub. I suppose it's gonna be a little bit like "suck it and see".
I'm now in a position to be able to feed the Daphnia and store some of the algae in the fridge for later use. I am using well washed 2 litre empty milk cartons as storage. This leads to another problem, I dont like throwing things away, least of all the algae that I have painstakingly strived to culture correctly. The Fridge (although massive) can only hold a certain amount of milk cartons especially ones with green fluid in. (which brings me into conflict with the missus again ) so I'll have to be thinking about getting a small fridge for the garage which would give me some added worktop space as a bonus.
I'll speak further about the actual Daphnid's themselves in my next installment.
Regards
C
I was quickly getting to the point of almost giving up hope and just resigning myself to the fact that a light green soup is the best I was going to achieve. Then I stumbled upon this little potion. Essentially a Phytoplankton fertilizer
Guillard’s f/2 formulation.
This seems to be the catalyst as far as I'm concerned in regards to assist production of the correct artificially cultured food for Daphnia. (external ponds aside). The fact that its a dedicated food for Phytoplankton suggests that there are no heavy metals present in the formulation. These unwanted commodities being one of the factors that would eventually kill the Daphnia culture. So that was a tick in the right box on that score.
I am feeding the Daphnia with 200mls of the algae every other day (the tub water going from green to almost clear in that time frame as the daphnia consume the algae) The daphnia culture going from being just sustainable it has now starting to flourish with the juveniles growing on and maturing and smaller ones appearing all the time, this surely must an indication that all is pretty much as it should be. The problem, now, for me is, I don't really know what the saturation rate should be for a particular size of tub. I suppose it's gonna be a little bit like "suck it and see".
I'm now in a position to be able to feed the Daphnia and store some of the algae in the fridge for later use. I am using well washed 2 litre empty milk cartons as storage. This leads to another problem, I dont like throwing things away, least of all the algae that I have painstakingly strived to culture correctly. The Fridge (although massive) can only hold a certain amount of milk cartons especially ones with green fluid in. (which brings me into conflict with the missus again
) so I'll have to be thinking about getting a small fridge for the garage which would give me some added worktop space as a bonus.I'll speak further about the actual Daphnid's themselves in my next installment.
Regards
C
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