FScalfano

I was reading about raising daphnia for live fish food and it raised a couple of questions in my mind. First, I have a 75 gal tank plumbed in parallel with my community 200 gal tank. The 75 has no fish just some dwarf hair grass (that I rescued from the tender attentions of my severums-a subject of a prior post) and some mangroves that I am growing. Could I use that tank to raise daphnia, considering that the temperature is the same as my community tank (78 F) and that they would probably spread into that tank even without my intervention? Second, as I have a koi pond in my yard, which has been operating for years, and is currently full of green algae, could I just scoop up water or sieve it to collect daphnia and insect larvae to feed my tank fish? Is this safe?

I have given them some pleco and algae wafers, which I had for my daughter's pleco tank. In my tank, there was plenty of green algae for the pleco and loaches, but the severums seem to be somewhat interested in the wafers. I will get some plant weights. Thanks all.

I have coarse gravel in the tank. I was thinking of mixing in some sand. I have never seen the severums touching the plants. All the other plants, swords, Java fern, vallisneria are fine.

I recently planted my 200 gal aquarium with some of the Coop dwarf hairgrass. Something in my tank keeps uprooting it. I have one small pleco, two butterfly loaches, four severum cichlids (small) and 8 long fin tetras (very small.) What can I do to keep whatever is doing this (I never see it happening, I suspect the pleco,) from doing it?