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Many of us have gotten into keeping fish thanks to the breadth of Tropical species in the hobby. Over the last few years, I have found Temperate climate fish species most intriguing. These live in local waterways around the USA. These photos are from our tanks… Banded Darters (Etheostoma zonale) Behavior is similar to goby species. Appreciates green plants in the tank. Males vary their brilliant green color depending on the season. Orangethroat Darters (Etheostoma spectabile) Very friendly and non aggressive. Cold water is best. Cold, unheated basements are perfect. Eats frozen bloodworms. Rainbow Shiners (Notropis chrosomus) More beautiful than many tropical species once mature, these Georgia and Alabama natives are my favorite Temperate species to keep and breed. They eat flake food just fine. Mountain Redbelly Dace (Chrosomus oreas) These are very nice in native river-stream setups. I have been able to breed… around a thousand by now. Gulf Coast Pygmy Sunfish (Elassoma gilberti) Very shy, these guys need live foods to thrive. Their courting dance moves are spectacular! Oh my… there’s so, so many more

Shrimp EVERYWHERE.... (apparently they're liking the Repashy I had put out)

I know, I am impossible. I have been going back and forth, get excited about something and shoot it down. Has been few weeks now 😄

I do not feed bee pollen, and I do not have issues. Here is a fun video I recently took. Cool! Shrimps are dope. I feed: boiled veggies catappa leaf Repashy Soilent green (as powder but also prepared. More often powder if shrimplets) Bacter AE calcium chips (crayfish empire) Kat’s Aquatics snail food (3-in-1) Hikari shrimp cuisine Sometimes: algae wafers Hikari crab cuisine snail cookies (crayfish empire) Also they are eating algae and biofilm off of things.

I kept 7x in a 55 gal. for awhile. I think that a 75 gal. definitely would have been better. But it was lovely just the same… I water change only about 30% once a week. I just use two large sponge filters

So, the Pygmy Sunfish just hide when bigger, faster fish are around. You’d almost never see the Sunfish. They’d do a little better with a smaller species like the Bluefin Killifish… Rainbow Shiners could enjoy a tank with many species of Darters. There are so many beautiful Darter species. These aren’t in my tanks, but here’s a Stipled Darter in brilliant display… And here’s an electric green Missouri strain of the Banded Darter… Just unbelievably beautiful. There’s another species I’ve kept — Saffron Shiner — but never successfully got them to color up…

This project has become a growing this cross river up. Im not to sure ill find another to pair but its been pretty fun so far. Tonights feeding was Eco fresh Dubia roaches. The "fresh" packaged bugs are popular with this puffer...... and the hundreds of cuban limia in the 270 with him. I always try for livebearers in with the puffers to handle the messy eating the limia vittata seem to be doing great here so far. They have been even better than the variatus platy for me. My current palustrus feeding rotation : "Fresh packaged": dubia roaches, superworms, soldierfly larvae Frozen foods : clams, raw whole crayfish, tilapia strips The rest: ramshorn snails, trapdoor snails, mystery snails, earthworms

Thanks for the response. My feeling is that, if nitrate is not harmful to nitrifying bacteria, there is no need to lower your nitrite levels (with water changes) and slow down your cycle. Although you can add back the ammonia, you can't (easily) add back the nitrite. I also agree that we should keep things simple. However, my feeling is that not doing anything is simpler than doing something. 🙂 In any event, @Bigdog99, whatever you decide to do, make sure ammonia and nitrite hit 0 and you reduce the nitrate level (either with one water change at the end or routine water changes while cycling) before adding fish. ...and keep us informed as to how it goes! 🙂

1. I am half way through the first round of E.M. I think I am following the directions correctly. I'm trying to anyway. 2. I think the best course given this advise to do add more fresh water to the tank and see if I can start the filter again (It wasn't on because I was advised to keep him in a gallon of water with salt). I'll add more salt to the fresh water and do a gravel vac. 3. I have an airstone running just enough to not be disruptive.

You want to read the ammonia test, any strip test, based on the directions on the package. Normally you read them immediately for accurate results. Any sort of discoloration from 0 ammonia would be of concern. Essentially there's two or three things you want to avoid here.... 1. Don't jump from med to med to med chasing a disease. We know what the issue is, we know how to treat it, so we just want to focus on proper method. Mainly what I am saying here, you need to always follow the directions on the package. Given that it's fin rot, salt is highly advised in addition to the meds. 2. You don't want to crash the filter, causing more issues via ammonia or nitrite. Daily testing, sometimes twice daily testing can be mandatory in a situation like this. If you see ammonia or nitrite then your focus would be to have daily 50% water changes, dosing dechlorinator, and then proceeding to continue testing the water parameters. At that point, you also verify your filtration is adequate, oxygenation is adequate, and/or consider something like a bacterial additive such as seachem stability or fritz zyme 7. 3. You don't want to overstress the fish to the point where it cannot recover. If you need to stop treatment to fix #2, then that might be the correct thing to do. It's a call you have to make. With temps up high, meds in the water, adding an airstone is helpful. The viscosity of the water changes and it's more difficult for the fish to respire and intake oxygen. The signs of stress your seeing is basically akin to feeling sick and having the infection and the fish's immune system fight off the disease. We don't want to do too much or miss something to help keep the fish headed towards recovery. It may or may not fix the swelling. As far as the disinterest in flaring, see above. It's pretty normal given the situation. Reduce lighting, reduce stress as much as possible, and make sure that the fish has good water parameters, oxygenation, and filtration right now. As for feeding, reducing feeding may help keep water parameters in check and reduce any discomfort from the treatment. If the fish is eating, it's a good sign.

The only issue with doing a water change in your situation would be lowering the amount of food for the bacteria and possibly retarding the growth of those bacteria (taking away nitrite before the colony has grown to the "right" size, for example). That said, I don't think that's probably too big of a concern for you. Either change water or don't. There's nothing to be harmed by the nitrates, so there's no necessity at this point. The amount of water to change, in this circumstance, is also pretty unimportant. Your colonies exist, it will be OK. I don't bother trying to cycle anything without livestock. I understand the reasoning behind it, but I think it overly complicates the hobby well in advance of really actively participating in it. I think you'd be safe doing a 100% water change today and putting fish in it once you fill it back up. You can continue to monitor the water, but my approach is just to do a daily 50% water change for at least two weeks. In a 10 gallon it's easy as pie on account of how small it is.

Today is two weeks and a couple of days since I first added the yellow shrimp to my tank. They are getting used to their new home and I'm seeing them more often. I think I have more males than females, but I'm sure I have at least 2 females, hopefully more. A few days ago, I saw a female up close and it looked like she might have some eggs. It looked like she was washing over them. But I haven't seen her since. Maybe false alarm or she's hiding. It would be nice to see the females more often. Since I put them in the tank, I've added a small sponge filter, more hiding places to make them feel comfortable and more botanicals. Fingers crossed 🤞 @Tanked

For a little clarification, most beneficial bacteria in cycled tanks is on surfaces (glass, sand, rock, wood, plants, as well as filter media), and only a negligible amount in the water. Plenty of bb exist on surfaces to do 100% water changes. For an example, in salt water with live rock, ppl can remove all sand and water when changing sand bed (I've done it), refill with water and fish, and there is no restart of the cycle.

I have never gotten HITH with my Discus. But fins snd body issues can build up as excess bacteria begins to attack. Their entire body has a unique slime coat (it’s what Discus fry eat off of as a first-food). In higher temperatures, bacteria has a way of multiplying fast and posing a risk. This is why many expert Discus keepers have a robust water-changing schedule.

Thanks! It's because that 10G gets all that protein! Interestingly I have the same shrimp going in two different setups, one is the actual shrimp colony and the other is the cull tank. Basically, one gets all the nice food, the other has a ton more surface area and would graze off all the surfaces a lot more regularly. They get the leftover fish food a lot, shrimp sticks once a week or so, but it's mostly the same care. With the shrimp only tank filtration is purely sponge, but the big tank has much more biological filtration. More flow, basically. I have had a lot less breeding in the cull tank with the fish food diet. One of Mark's shrimp tank original videos was about how goldfish flake is a good shrimp food.

I use a lot of botanicals. I found that the microfauna and microfilm grow best in alder cones. I also love to boil my catappa leaves and other botanicals, leave them sitting in the tannic liquid for a week to create a biofilm before adding to any of my shrimp tanks. I am not too big on adding a lot of food to my tanks, hence the reason I use the shrimp sticks my dude on Etsy creates and the shrimp jerky(as he calls it). I use Bee Pollen for sporadic uses to feed shrimplets. I am super weird on adding a lot of food to my caridina tanks as its raises the TDS more often than not and I am extremely cautious with my parameters with these more so than my neos. Fun Fact: my cherries I added to my mother's office 10 gal have EXPLODED! Shrimplets all over. They basically lives off of whatever leftover fish food her fishies get. They do throw way more wilds than I thought though...so that is something I take into consideration if I were to mess with cherries in the future. Love the insight here tho! Tank redo looks great!

Albinos cannot just pick up melanin from their diet and environment. I think the ‘palette’ theory talked about above holds the most water for why an albino picked up colors. true albinos are devoid of pigment. And usually comes with a host of genetic disorders. Thus breeders typically avoid true albinos and attempt leucistic and other variations of albinism instead. Those angels are beautiful btw!

Correct! But you also feed things like veggies and the snello stuffs. That's part of what mine might be missing? One of the things I had discovered after all this went down was how much they really devoured some leaves.

Last weekend, I got a lesson in both pros and cons of too many plants. I noticed my 20g tall tank looked 'off' and couldn't figure out why. I sat there wondering what could cause the conditions I was looking at: the water looked 'thick' somehow. The normal sparse layer of duckweed on the top of the tank was very dense and when I disturbed it by moving a net around, it didn't immediately float back up. It rose slowly-- more like the tank was full of baby oil than water. There were a lot of dead and decaying leaves from my aponogeton drifting around like rotten seaweed. The four fish in the tank looked okay and were behaving normally; I really could not understand how, because the tank looked so grisly and the pH was high. Worried that so much duckweed might be preventing air exchange, I decided to check the airflow into the tank. The airstone was bubbling along as usual. But the filter was not 😞 Between a giant anubias and dense corkscrew val blocking the view, the sponge filter was not visible from the front or side of this tank. I had been turning lights on and feeding every day but honestly could not say when I had last observed the filter. My guess from the Armageddon look of the tank is that the filter had not been running for a couple of weeks or more. With decreased surface motion, the duckweed layer thickened up and choked out light and air, despite a large goldfish living in the tank! So: too many plants was bad because I couldn't see the filter to notice there was no air moving through it. But too many plants was also good because with two large fish (and two small ones) in only 20g, the fish were still alive and appeared unbothered by lack of airflow and devastation all around, because (I assume) all the plants were also putting out some oxygen and consuming some of the waste created by all the rotting leaves. I apologized to the fish, got the filter running, removed the duckweed as much as I could, removed the anubias and a lot of valisneria, added an Aquaclear full of crushed coral to help with pH and catching floating crud, gravel vac'd and did a couple of water changes. It's still an example of Armageddon Lite, but at least the water looks like liquid now. The moral of the story is: don't let plants block your view of your air sources, but if you have a filter failure, having a lot of plants may be a great advantage. No photo of the tank because it's too humiliating!

Try floating plants and stuff like pothos roots in the water. Fast growing plants and direct access to light and co2 helps a lot My tap reads 40 ppm nitrate. This is my way to cope

I’m not sure exactly. I may have tested it at ca. 40 ppm when my Rams were breeding in there. The tank has been going for a few years now. I sold off a few Discus, and added several more.

Thank you! And yes that was one of the few things I managed to find as well. I know someone who keeps a group of 15 IRL but they are still growing. The “color change” confused me in that article. I asked the friend and he said he has not observed anything like that in his batch at least to this day. He is one of the most experienced if not the most experienced person I know IRL. How can an albino fish develop a color later on suddenly? We are both kinda surprised to see “albino fish” developing colors and going dark. I have not heard anything like that myself before. How is that even possible? they explain it in the abovementioned albino dantum article as: “I then started to think that something in the environment I provided had caused the melanin production to continue as in normal angelfish. After a little online research I discovered that in albino animals, if a trigger caused the enzyme tyrosinase to be turned on, then this fish with two albino genes would have those genes not activated. So, there are environmental triggers that prevent the expression of albino, or if you want to look at it a different way, that allow the production of melanin even in the presence of homozygous albino.” Is this true or even possible?@Biotope Biologist @Odd Duckwhat do you guys think? If so, in nature albino creatures have such disadvantage. Why wouldn’t they use such biological capability to their advantage then? Agreed. Im trying to convince myself not to spend to get me a group of 5-6 and expect pairing in the future 🙂

Thank you @CiderLovesFish! I was doing some late night research and I am just always researching the topic. I've done a deep dive and I have read these articles from this source before, but for whatever reason tonight things sunk in. I wanted to share some tidbits and then go ahead and try to make sense of some adjustments I need to make for my tank. But first..... I got the shrimp a new thingamajig. I'll use it and give some semblance of my thoughts. Initially, I will say I wish the handle was steel, it's carbon fiber.... which sort of freaks me out. It has a very fragile ring on the net, but the net itself is really nice. The handle is a little "dry", but I am hoping it will be fine over time and not splinter or anything like that. This is the tank after the move and all the rework on the tank. The anubias is in the corners, the moss wall and the potted plants will have the focus on the light, and so hopefully that changes things around a bit. There are floating plants, which are in the top right. Better photos eventually, but I wanted to share just to say that the tank feels a lot more open with the new layout. I hope feeding is a bit easier too. I don't plant to move rocks / lift things as much for cleaning. I am going to let things build-up a little bit in some areas. Alright, so I was reading this article about shrimp molting issue: https://aquariumbreeder.com/dwarf-shrimp-and-molting-problems-the-white-ring-of-death/ I wanted to pull up a few tidbits that are mentioned to make it a little easier to digest the key points. How it happens... Expanding on this, here is a video of a shrimp molting that has a very pronounced white ring on it's body. It is not a deathknell. I can find a lot of tanks from youtube shrimpkeepers that are showing this on their colonies. As much as we have this mindset that it's a "ring of death", that just is not the case. I prefer to use the term molt issues when discussing this phenomenon because it removes some of that misleading verbiage. Molting issues and the concept of protein in the diet as a cause: (note: there are a lot of shrimp foods that use protein as a main ingredient, not algae) ...about halfway through the article this next topic is mentioned, which sort of put things into perspective. https://aquariumbreeder.com/how-to-supplement-shrimp-and-snails-with-calcium/ From the note about Shrimp King Mineral: So.... that's the crux of it then. Am I feeding enough "complete foods"? Or, better stated, is feeding complete foods alone enough for the shrimp themselves to molt properly every time? Do they specifically need mineral additives to eat off of for the sake of their overall health. Is a mineral additive food something that I can use for the sole sake of times of stress, like once a month or after water changes, perhaps... I saw these, and I think this might be the route to go, given my current setup. I have to look into ingredients and decide on things. There is also a nordic food version, shrimp king version, but I think this is a good place to start. There is one other things to consider though, and this is basically my dilemma right now. ......😞 I tried to find the sentence, but it's basically that shrimp need a lot of different types of minerals to function properly. Diet plays a huge role, having a varied diet also plays a role. I noticed issues when I ran out of bee pollen. Is this one of the main reasons I was experience the deaths en masse? I added a secondary food, I improved the food, but perhaps there are some key vitamins or minerals missing. Everything I am finding for shrimp diets can be split into 3 main categories. -Calcium/Mineral supplements -Nutrient supplements (aminostix / specialty foods, botanicals) -Bacteria supplements (to build biofilm in the tank or probiotics) I don't have any real idea if I need to have both nutrient and mineral things covered or if those complete foods supply everything the shrimp need. I did check the shrimp baby ingredients and it is one I will be adding whenever that can be possible. Bee pollen is another that I think will be a mainstay in my tanks. Current foods: -Dennerle Shrimp King Complete (stick and powdered) -Nordic daybyday (stick) -Repashy powder (mix of things, mostly omnivore food) -botanicals/mulberry leaves Future plans: -2 Complete foods on rotation -1 baby/powder food -1 mineral food -Bee pollen -mulberry leaves / alder cones (potentially: 1 nutrient supplement or biofilm type of foods) I am just mulling all of these things over. I am not sure what is correct, so it's purely a research stage and pondering everything.

The 6 gallon just keeps growing plants like crazy. The barteri has a couple new leaves already and have removed loads of water lettuce a couple times since. This tank takes care of itself. So nice! The 20 gallon just keeps doing its thing, too. Churning out cherry shrimp like crazy. Loads of Java moss and duckweed coming out of here. The Cory’s are still doing good. Lost one Endler male. Still have three in here. The lone cherry barb is doing good. Really need to get this girl some mates! I really like the glow coming through the layer of duckweed in this tank.

This is just a thought currently but I’ve been converting filtered water into hydrogen water to drink everyday. Based on what I’ve learned it’s very beneficial for the human body. I know aquarium fish are not mammals but it can’t to try. I have a 10 gallon that I’m thinking of putting 10 gallons of hydrogen water with a glass lid on top of the aquarium, so the hydrogen gas does not go through. I would aquascape the aquarium as usual and maybe put guppies as they are good experimental fish in my experience. Any thoughts?

I have a lone female Polar Blue Parrot (PBP) who's tank mates have moved on. I would like to add some new tank mates but don't want to end up with unwanted fry or the aggression I've read about that comes with mating. So I was considering a PBP/Platinum Parrot sorority... But I haven't been able to find any info on PBP sororities, or Red Blood Parrot sororities or even Convict sororities. Is there a reason? Do the females get more aggressive if there's no male(s) present? I know some people aren't the biggest fans of Parrots and I respect that, if possible I'd like to keep the post about opinions on PBP sororities and not on the fish themselves. Thank you.

Good luck playing hide-and-seek, @Schuyler!

Right so with baking soda you will miss all other minerals. thanks for the clarification.

I've been planning a temperate tank for about a year now and am finally getting to it. 20 long with cherry barbs, paleatus cories and trapdoor snails.

I see that you already did this, but just an fyi....there really isn't a hard and fast answer to this. It depends on what the KH/PH of your source water is in the first place. A teaspoon may have different end results in PH/KH.....depending on one's original start. A great way to test is to know the value of your source water, and add and mix in a given amount (say a teaspoon) to a 5 gallon bucket; wait a bit, and then retest. Then, you can determine what that given amount does to your water specifically. In short, I have found a cycle will complete faster at a non-acidic PH. Just keep in mind when you add fish, you generally want them to see the source water perameters, and not a doctored value. (Unless you plan to consistantely doctor the water)

I got red worms n chopped a piece of and he's eating it!! I had to put it right in front of him, but once he was in it, it was over!!

Two of the eggs seen to have melted away but the two remaining haven't turned blue so I'm guessing that means they are viable. I had a bit of a mishap. I put all of the fry in a deli cup so that I could feed them easier. They were floating in a 10 gallon tank but tonight when I went to check on them the cup has tipped slightly and they were all about to escape. The good news is that the tank doesn't have any fish that will eat them. The bad news is that they are going to be almost impossible to find without tearing apart the tank. Tomorrow is water change day, I'll look for them then.

That’s a beautiful fish

Pretty much anything is fine. A lot of people use the nicrew planted 24/7 lights, Co-op light is also a good choice if you prefer those features and warranty. Curling leaves is a part of a deficiency showing, I believe it would be calcium based on my references. I would just recommend tabbing this plant and not changing anything else to see if that helps. You mentioned 2 tabs, try doing 3-4 because of the size of the plant. (There's also yellowing, so it's just a nutrient issue basically) What is your fert of choice, tab of choice, and maintenance routine? I would also check your GH and KH levels.

Here is a very nice write up on them, with a few videos embedded. They look beautiful!

Unless the tank is already well set up, the shrimp will need forage to nibble on. Read up on caring for them. @Shadow has experience keeping shrimp, and may chime in here. In my view, a group of 10x could do. But they will need the right things to eat.

by adding baking soda your adding carbonate and salt that’s it nothing else I will increase your pH kh tds now if you add crushed coral your ph kh gh and tds will increase but how quickly it dissolves is dependent on your ph above 7.5 ish it won’t dissolve at all so by adding baking soda you’re stopping the crushed coral from dissolving the way it would in your normal water in short if your going to add crushed corals just do it first figure out how much you need now and just keep it there The cycle is a perfect time to figure all this stuff out imo.

Aren't coral and baking soda raising hardness and pH ? so if you are at 8 and trying to reach 7,2 by Adding more. wouldn't that be counter productive? In any case what im trying to ask is this: Would it be good to make the tapwater that I use for my initial build of the tank harder. (no fish in cycle) soo that I get a head start on the slower process of the coral getting my water up to Endler guppy specs. And is using baking soda safe when you mix it in a bucket then measure until its its where it needs to be. Then using that water start cycling and add fis way way later in " the cycle".

In my experience, the blood worms stay together much better. They’re just harder for the little guys to eat.

Yeah, they’re really special. I raised these from summer tubbing. Here’s another shot of a male I just snapped…

Man, some of that coloration would give their marine counterparts a run for their money! Those Pygmy Sunfish are dope.

@Fish Folk I've personally kept Rainbow Darter and agree some native species can look just beautiful as tropical aquarium fish species.

I don't think I mentioned but this picture ended up winning the photo contest. I used a portion of the gift card prize to buy a pair of American flagfish from an LFS. They've been quarantining for about a week now and seem to be perking up and eating more. They're still pretty shy so no pictures yet. I put the spawning spot in their tank again and the male seemed pretty excited and started digging around right away It wasn't too long before they were spawning I took some time off around Christmas and during that time I was able to rearrange things to make space for a 20 long: Things aren't totally finalized yet though. I have a few different options in considering: 1) Get some type of dwarf cichlid that likes coconut huts (my son likes making them so we have quite a few) 2) Set up a mini fry grow out system 3) Move pygmy corys from another tank and attempt to breed them in here 4) Do a botanical heavy clown killi tank and try to breed them

Could this be from the spawning behavior you witnessed above? My gardneri will regularly injure their lips after sparring or spawning. As long as you stay on top of water changes (I also add a pinch of salt to the water when this occurs) it should be okay. Good luck!

Because I like to collect from the wild, I come across a lot of Interesting zooplankton. Generally, I discard the ones I can't identify as a viable food source and feed the ones I can to my fish. In the past, I haven't put much effort into keeping any of these zooplankton. Because they're collected from the wild, any culture tends to become contaminated with numerous known and unknown microorganisms. Without closely monitoring what's growing in them, you're not really sure what you're feeding your fish. Well all that's about to change because daddy bought a microscope ... that's me …. I'm daddy. So, for the past few weeks I've been doing a lot of digging for information on some of these zooplankton, mostly various types of water fleas, and thought I'd share some of it. First, note that I've listed the higher percentages of nutrional content I've found. The nutritional content of zooplankton can vary by a large degree depending on the quality of their food source. For example, I found reports of the % protein of Daphnia magna to be anywhere between 42–62%. The quality of the food for water fleas, with the exception of Bosmina, seems to be based on it's phosphorus content which is their limiting nutrient. The quantity of food is also important. Water fleas increase their filtering rate when food is scarce. When exposed to prolonged periods of low feed concentrations, the increased filtering rate can use more energy than they receive from their food resulting in nutrient deficiencies or even death by starvation. Too much food can have a similar effect. Water fleas slow filtering rates when food is abundant, but they also increase grooming activity. When feed concentrations are too high, grooming can speed up to a rate that also uses more energy than the water flea can receive from their food. ...Anyways here are some of the interesting zooplankton I've found: Bosmina longirostris Length: 0.2–0.6 mm 60% protein, 18% lipid, 12% carbohydrates, 6% ash, 4.8 kcal/g Found clinging to plants and detritus. Confirmed food sources in the wild include phytoplankton, bacteria, protozoans detritus, and feces. Can both filter feed and graze particles from surfaces. Mass cultures are rare but have been successful using phytoplankton, snail feces, and animal manure. Chydorus sphaericus Length: 0.3–0.6 mm 70% protein, 19% lipid, 8% carbohydrates, 3% ash, 6.1 kcal/g Found clinging to plants, detritus, and suspended in open water. Tolerant of an extremely wide range of water parameters. Confirmed food sources in the wild include phytoplankton, protozoans, bacteria, and detritus. Midge fly larvae feces has been reported to be important for reproduction. Chydorus is often found to be the major food source of wild fish larvae. Mass cultures are rare but have been successful using phytoplankton and a mixture of yeast, powdered trout feed, and cerophyl (wheatgrass vitamin supplement). Ceriodaphnia dubia Length: 0.4–1.2 mm 54% protein, 12% lipid, 30% carbohydrates, 4% ash, 4.9 kcal/g Found suspended in open water in a way very similar to Daphnia. Confirmed food sources in the wild include phytoplankton and suspended bacteria. Ceriodaphnia are commonly used in toxicity studies and are considered a water quality indicator species by the EPA. Mass cultures have been successful using yeast, powdered trout feed, and animal manure. Cerophyl has been successful as a feed in soft water to medium hard water only. Mixed species of phytoplankton have been successful but isolates of many single phytoplankton species have not. Ceriodaphnia have the highest feeding rates in lowlight conditions but stop feeding in the dark. Multiple daily peaks in feeding rates can be induced with exposure to multiple high/low light cycles a day. Ceriodaphnia also do much better under low feed conditions than most other water fleas. Daphnia magna Length: 1.5–4.5 mm 62% protein, 9% lipid, 22% carbohydrates, 7% ash, 2.5–5.6 kcal/g Found suspended in open water also in a way very similar to Daphnia ...because they are Daphnia. Confirmed food sources in the wild include phytoplankton, suspended bacteria, cyanobacteria, detritus, feces, and even inorganic forms of nutrients such as phosphate when organic forms are unavailable. Mass cultures have been successful using yeast, phytoplankton, animal manure, and waste products from food processing plants or powdered forms of soybean, green pea, and rice bran. Daphnia fed yeast were found to have the much higher nutritional content but much lower growth and reproduction rates compared to daphnia fed phytoplankton. Cyanobacteria fed cultures have similar reproduction rates to phytoplankton diets but only after an intial die off and adaptation period. Daphnia cannot survive on pure bacteria diets but can achieve bery rapid growth and reproduction rates on 50/50 to 80/20 ratio phytoplankton/bacteria diets. Cultures using mixed diets always outperform pure diets. Daphnids do 85% of their feeding in the hours surrounding sunrise and sunset. Feeding rates are moderate during daylight periods and slows dramatically around midnight. Moina macrocopa WHY CAN'T I FIND YOU?!?! Here's some info anyways... Length: 0.6–1.8 mm 63% protein, 18% lipid, 18% carbohydrates, 1% ash, 4.0–4.3 kcal/g Confirmed food sources in the wild are similar to that of Daphnia magna. Moina has been successfully mass cultured with the same feeds as Daphnia. Moina however can be fed fish and canola oils, a higher percentage of suspended bacteria, and cyanobacteria without the initial die off. Moina is being seriously tested by some hatcheries as a full replacement for baby brine shrimp which has resulted in higher reported fry survival rates. This may be because Moina contains higher levels of a few very important essential nutrients for many fish larvae than BBS. Simocephalus vetulus Length: 0.6–2.6 mm 54% protein, 12% lipid, 30% carbohydrates, 4% ash, 3.7–4.0 kcal/g Found clinging to solid objects, especially vegetation. Confirmed to feed on phytoplankton, bacteria, protozoans, and detritus. Can feed by filtration or by scraping algal or bacterial growth off the surface of objects. Bacteria can play a major dietary role. Simocephalus feeding rates are not affected by light levels. Mass cultures have been successful using phytoplankton and biofloc. Brachionus rubens (Freshwater rotifer) [The numbers below are from a non-specific rotifer species] Length: 0.2–0.3 mm 52% protein, 26% lipid, 18% carbohydrates, 5% ash Found in open water, clinging to surfaces or to larger zooplankton such as Daphnia magna. Mass culture has been successful using phytoplankton and yeast. ____________ That's it for now. In the future I'll share some culture techniques and experiments I'm doing for each of these and with greenwater. More species might be added if found. Sources either directly from or from the reference sections of: Physiology of the Cladocera by Nikolai N. Smirnov Plankton of Inland Waters by Gene E. Likens Ecology and Classification of North American Freshwater Invertebrates by Thorp and Covich Moreau A, Dupuy C, Bocher P, Farau S (2021) Morphological, calorific and nutritive characteristics of 656 freshwater invertebrates taxa. Biodiversity Data Journal 9: e70214

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***Chydorus (2)*** At a crazy 70% protein and an adult size smaller than newly hatched brine shrimp, chydorus has been one of the main new live feeds I've been trying to develop a low maintenance, high density culture method for. I made some progress feeding microalgae that had settled on the bottom of culture jars so the chydorus could graze on it rather than filter. After finding some literature that suggested feces was important to chydorus reproduction, I tried using cow manure. But results from both of these were inconsistent. More progress came after noticing the population grew faster when the jar was kept away from light. However this only seemed to be true in the jars fed microalgae. Regardless, the population never grew large enough to support regular harvesting. At this point it's been about 8 months of trial and not quite good enough results ...then I discovered I already had a super high density chydorus culture. They were in my 55 gallon scud barrel probably this whole time. I usually skim duckweed off the surface with a net that can let the smallest scuds through. Last week a different kind of duckweed took over. It's much smaller and almost spherical so I used a much finer net. Wondering what kind of duckweed this could be, I put the net in a bucket of water. The next day, I found thousands of chydorus in the bucket. ALL THE WASTED TIME AND EFFORT!! But still I want to figure out how to grow them in jar indoors. So what could they be eating in the barrel that allowed their population to grow to large? The barrel has hundreds, maybe thousands, of scuds whose only food source is dead plant matter mostly from hornwort and elodea. Maybe the chydorus are eating the same thing. This would make sense of the low light jars with microalgae. Perhaps it was the low light causing the microalgae to die off which made for a better food source than living microalgae. I decided to throw in a few different types of leaves from a spring mix salad and compare that to jars fed spirulina powder, golden pearls fry food, and live greenwater. Of the three feeds I just mentioned, there was no noticeable difference in population size, although they all did sustain the population. Thicker leaves from the salad mix, like spinach and swiss char, turned the water cloudy very quickly, killed off the chydorus, and filled with infusaria over the next two days. But jars fed thinner, more fragile types of lettuce had a big population boom. Other thin leaves, like celery leaves, also worked well. Yellowing leaves were consumed almost completely over night. Thin, dying plant matter seems to be the secret.

***Chydorus (1)*** I've been trying to establish a growing population of Chydorus for a while and finally made some progress. My first attempts to culture Chydorus were to use the same methods for culturing Daphnia—just add greenwater. But these would always eventually die out. Luckily I could always find a few new Chyds (I'm going to call them Chyds) in the detritus of my Ceriodaphnia cultures to try again. Looking through the literature, Vijverberg (1997) found that Chyds grow much better in small scale cultures when fed natural lake detritus than with a microalgae (greenwater) mix of Chlamydomonas and Scenedesmus. Also, in natural waters where Chydorus populations are the most abundant zooplankton, the amount of suspended [in the water column] microalgae also tends to be highest—which is generally considered to mean it's not being fed upon (Eyto 2001). The largest populations of Chydorus are found in still pools or ponds where their main food source seems to be detritus and periphyton—algae and bacteria that grows on the surface of aquatic plants, wood, or debris (Basińska 2014). All of this together is interesting. First, it sounds like Chyds prefer grazing over filter feeding which might be why suspended microalgae is abundant where Chyds are also abundant. But we can also look at it a different way. Maybe Chyds are abundant where suspended microalgae is abundant. That might sound redundant but what I mean by that is "maybe the causal factor isn't as intuitive as we might think?" Most Daphnids that rely primarily on filter feeding actually suffer when suspended microalgae becomes too dense (Smirnov 2017). But that density shouldn't matter to grazers. And when suspended microalgae is dense, much of it settles. Settled microalgae can be grazed on. So lots of suspended microalgae could mean less competition from filter feeders which means more settling for the Chyds to feed on. My experiments seem to confirm this. The Chyd population at the bottom of my detritus filled Ceriodaphnia tank always stayed extremely small. But my first successful Chydorus cultures came from allowing microalgae to settle in low light conditions in vials about the size of a camera film canister (I keep my film canisters right next to my rotary dial landline). Under the microscope their guts appear green or bright yellow which I believe means they are indeed feeding on both living and dying microalgae. The type of microalgae so far doesn't seem to matter. Maybe cell size isn't a limiting factor for grazers like it is for filter feeders. In fact, so far I've found using a microalgae with a larger cell, like Scenedesmus, works better because it prevents contamination by copepods. It also seems like Chydorus is the only thing I've come across that can utilize non-branching filamentous (nbf) microalgae as a food source—possibly due to the grazing. In the photo above, the jar on the left is pure Scenedesmus and the jar on the right is mostly an unidentified nbf. The population of Chyds in each looks about the same. Feeding My Fry My cultures haven't grown dense enough yet to test adding Chydorus as a major part of my frys' diet. I also can't find records of anyone else doing so. This is surprising because Chyds have been found to be a major part of wild fry diets, have among the highest potential protein content I've seen at over 70% (although high protein isn't everything), and adults are about the size of newly hatched brine shrimp. Adding a supplemental feed would probably increase my output. I found one record of culturing Chyds at high density (EPA-660/3-75-010 1975). They fed small amounts of LIV (a dehydrated egg product?), cerophyl (wheatgrass extract?), and brewers yeast three times a week. But I don't much like using yeast and I'm not sure what those other two things are exactly. But others have found Chydus populations increase faster in the presence of Daphnia, midge fly, and snail feces (Smirnov 2017). First I'll test adding some cow manure and see what happens from there. SOURCES Smirnov NN (2017). Physiology of the Cladocera. Elsevier Academic Press. Belyaeva M, Deneke R (2007). Colonization of acidic mining lakes: Chydorus sphaericus and other Cladocera within a dynamic horizontal pH gradient (pH 3−7) in Lake Senftenberger See (Germany). Hydrobiologia volume 594:97–108. Elvira de Eyto (2001) Chydorus sphaericus as a biological indicator of water quality in lakes, Internationale Vereinigung für theoretische und angewandte Limnologie: Verhandlungen, 27:6, 3358-3362, Vijverberg J & Boersma M (1997). Long-term dynamics of small-bodied and large-bodied cladocerans during the eutrophication of a shallow reservoir, with special attention for Chydorus sphaericus. Hydrobiologia 360: 233–242. Basińska AM, Antczak M, Świdnicki K, Jassey VEJ, and Kuczyńska-Kippen N (2014). Habitat type as strongest predictor of the body size distribution of Chydorus sphaericus (O. F. Müller) in small water bodies. International Review of Hydrobiology 99: 1–11. Martin DB, Novotny JF (1975). Studies to determine methods for culturing three freshwater zooplankton species. EPA-660/3-75-010.