Advice on starting a daphnia colony, and tip on other live food colonies

[KittenFishMom]

I want to start a daphnia colony, and have all the standard question:

Any advice on where to get clean live daphnia or good daphnia eggs?

I think there are 2 sizes. should I try growing both? If yes, should I grow them together or separately? If no, which is better?

Any recommendations on containers/tanks/environment?

Any recommendations on feeding them?

I have several scud colonies, and my brine shrimp colony is well underway. Any recommendations/tips/tricks for those are also welcome.

I have also started a bunch of mangrove seedlings. I put one in each colony, and several in the fish tanks.

I am hoping to look forward to lots of interesting replies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Gator]

Go on google to get info about Daphnia, where to buy a starter culture, but the only thing I know about them is that several 10 G tanks are recommended, each with an algae culture already going as Daphnia eat free floating algae, you may be able to use Baker's yeast as a substitute. You can also use Baker's yeast to feed your Brine shrimp culture, and maybe raise them to adulthood. 

[KittenFishMom]

I raise a 10 gallon tank of brine shrimp to adult and breeding age this summer. I use lake water, bits of lake seaweed and random dashes of fish food and over the summer about 1/4  of an 8 oz bottle of Spirulina powder. It was teaming with brine shrimp.

Then I decided not to try to do fish inside over the winter and let it collapse. Now I have a new colony under way.

It is so funny to watch the young bullhead catfish go nuts when I put some baby brine shrimp in the tank now. I raised them on brine shrimp mixed with A CoOp easy fry food.  They can taste the salty brine shrimp water, but can't find anything big enough to bite. They were a day old when I netted them. They are about 3 inches now. They know that taste the brine shrimp, but the just can't find it. (Their entire body is covered in taste buds, you should see them change direction if you drop a night crawler on their back). The minnows and killifish hunt and eat the baby shrimp for 2 or 3 days, until they die out.

A trick I discovered was that on cool days, the shrimp hatched slower. After the first 24 hours, I added some spirulina powder to the hatchery to feed the early hatchers, while waiting for the majority to hatch. It seemed to help get more out of the slow batches. After I collected the bulk of the hatched shrimp I put the water below the shells in the colony tank to finish hatching. It didn't take long to get a strong colony going.  Now I have fewer fish, so I feed half the hatched shrimp, and the rest go in the colony.

 

Edited December 29, 2021 by KittenFishMom